Monster Storm Becomes Strongest on Record for Alaska

The Alaskan - Siberian Hurricane
Superstorm Nuri

The remnants of Nuri which has moved into the Bering Sea  has become the most intense storm to ever impact the region.

The former Super Typhoon Nuri has tracked northward into the Bering Sea, located in between Alaska and Russia, and has lost all tropical characteristics.

The system has undergone rapid intensification, producing howling winds as the central pressure plummets to near record levels.

On Friday night, the Ocean Prediction Center analyzed the central area of low pressure to be 924 millibars.

This means that the storm has become the most powerful storm to ever move over the Bering Sea in recorded history in terms of central pressure.

Previous to this storm, the old record stood at 925 millibars from a powerful storm that moved over the Bering Sea on Oct. 25, 1977.

To put this in perspective, the lowest pressure recorded in Hurricane Sandy was 940 millibars.

Despite what NOAA said, there are no good records of storms in this area, at least before the modern era, so we may never know if this is a record.

Conditions will slowly improve across the region on Sunday after the system produced waves as large as 45 feet high and hurricane-force winds.

Winds on Friday gusted to 97 mph at Shemya, Alaska, home to the U.S. Eareckson Air Station.

Large waves should still be anticipated which can make it very difficult to navigate the waters of the Bering Sea.

Super Storm Brings Early Artic Blast To Lower 48

A massive storm expected to help push Arctic air toward the lower 48 states was moving slowly east after blasting parts of Alaska's Aleutian Islands with hurricane-force winds.

The tempest fueled by the remnants of Typhoon Nuri was forecast to play a role in generating a high-pressure system that will allow frigid air to blanket the central plains, starting with eastern Montana and the Dakotas on Sunday. The frigid temperatures are expected to spill south into the central plains on Monday.

The system was centered 220 miles northwest of Adak in the Aleutian chain, David Kochevar, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said early Sunday.

"It's slowly dissipating over the Bering Sea," he said.

Its strongest winds had diminished considerably and were recorded at just 45 mph in Adak and Shemya Island, Kochevar said.

The storm peaked Friday with sustained winds of 70 mph and gusts up to 96 mph on Shemya, forecasters said.

The weakened storm was expected to bring gale-force winds to the Alaska mainland's southwestern coast, typical for this time of year, weather service meteorologist Shaun Baines said.

"The worst conditions were out where there's no people," he said Saturday.

On Shemya Island, 120 civilian contractors staff an early warning radar installation for the U.S. military. Eareckson Air Station on the island 1,500 miles southwest Anchorage saw minor facility damage, Alaskan Command public affairs officer Tommie Baker said.

The corners of a roof were bent back and some dumpsters moved around, but no roof was torn off and the dumpters didn't slam into any vehicles or buildings, Baker said. Workers locked themselves inside to wait out the storm.

Workers had yet to conduct a full assessment of damage around the entire island, Baker said. But workers there are accustomed to extreme weather, including 100-mile winds. The community averages six weather-related lockdowns a year.

The storm surpassed the intensity of 2012's Superstorm Sandy as measured by pressure, but a lack of measuring stations in the remote region means meteorologists didn't have much more data. Sandy caused at least 182 deaths and $65 billion in damage on the East Coast. Nuri, in contrast, hit a sparsely populated region with just a few small communities where people are accustomed to severe weather.

The high-pressure system Nuri will help create is expected to send temperatures plunging across a wide swath of the lower 48 states. High temperatures were forecast to be below freezing on Tuesday across much of Wyoming to Minnesota and parts of Iowa, said Bruce Sullivan of the National Weather Service's prediction center.

The high in Great Falls, Montana, is expected to be 7 degrees, Sullivan said. By Wednesday, high temperatures will struggle to get out of the low 30s in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, he said.

Remnants of Nuri Explode, Creating a Monster Storm Now Threatening Alaska With Hurricane-Strength Winds

The Aleutian Islands in Alaska are bracing today for a monster storm born of the remnants of Super Typhoon Nuri. The forecast in the westernmost part of the island chain is for hurricane strength winds and waves up to 35 feet high or more.

An animation of infrared satellite images shows the evolution of Nuri into a massive extra-tropical storm. 

(Source: Space Science Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin)

You can see the transformation of the cyclone into an extra-tropical super-storm in the animation of infrared satellite images above. Nuri starts in the extreme lower left corner off of Japan. It’s that round, compact object — white at the center and surrounded by shades of red. It then moves to the northeast off the Japanese coast and transforms into a massive storm (look for the big splotch of red) off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Today it’s heading for the Aleutians and the Bering Sea.

The storm’s central pressure is forecast to bottom out at a remarkably low 925 millibars. The all-time low pressure ever recorded in Alaska was 926 millibars at Dutch Harbor on Oct. 25, 1977,according to the Weather Underground chief meteorologist Jeff Masters. With that in mind, Masters says Nuri’s remnants are “predicted to become one of Earth’s strongest storms on record.”

In addition to hurricane-strength winds, the monster storm is predicted to kick up waves as high as a five-story building. Here’s an animation showing forecast wave heights, with the color pink representing heights in excess of 15 meters, or 50 feet:

Shemya Island in the far western Aleutians will be experiencing the storm’s full fury today, with winds forecast to hit 90 miles per hour. The U.S. Air Force operates a radar, surveillance and weather station there, as well as a 10,000 foot-long runway, which was first opened in 1943.

The Aleutians are sparsely populated. But may fishing boats ply the rich waters of the Bering Sea. As of yesterday, boats were seeking shelter in Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. As KTVA TV reported yesterday, “The Saga, a fishing vessel featured on the Discovery Channel’s ‘Deadliest Catch,’ was in Dutch Harbor on Thursday evening to unload crab.”