STORM BATTERS ALASKA, CAUSES WIDESPREAD FLOODING

Typhoon’s remnants dump heavy rain, knock out power

A powerful storm traveling north through the Bering Strait on Saturday caused widespread flooding in several western Alaska coastal communities, knocking out power and sending residents fleeing for higher ground.

The force of the water moved some homes off their foundations, and one house in Nome was floating down a river until it got caught at a bridge.

The storm is what remains of Typhoon Merbok, a storm that is also inf luencing weather patterns as far away as California, where strong winds and a rare late-summer rainstorm were expected.

In Alaska, no injuries or deaths were immediately reported, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Officials had warned some places could see their worst f looding in 50 years and that the high waters could take up to 14 hours to recede.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Saturday issued a disaster declaration for affected communities.

Among the hardest hit was Golovin, where most of the village’s 170 or so residents either took shelter at the school or in three buildings on a hillside. Winds in the area were gusting over 60 mph and the water level was 11 feet above the normal high tide line and was expected to rise another 2 feet Saturday before cresting.

“Most of the lower part of the community is all flooded with structures and buildings inundated,” said Ed Plumb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks.

Clarabelle Lewis, the facility manager for the tribal government, the Chinik Eskimo Community, was among those who sought refuge on the hill overlooking Golovin. She and others were riding out the storm in the tribal office after securing items at their homes from the winds and helping their neighbors do the same.

“The winds were howling; it was noisy,” she said.

Lewis has never experienced a storm like this in the 20 years she’s lived in Golovin.

“We’ve had flooding in the past a few times, but it was never this severe,” she said. “We’ve never had homes moved from their foundations.”

There were also reports of flooding in Hooper Bay, St. Michael’s, Unalakleet and Shaktoolik, where waves broke over the berm in front of the community, Plumb said.

He said the storm will track through the Bering Strait on Saturday and then head into the Chukchi Sea.

In Northern California, wind gusts up to 40 mph were forecast overnight Saturday and into this morning along coastal areas from Sonoma County down to Santa Cruz and at higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada, the National Weather Service said.

Winds of that strength can bring down branches and drought-stressed trees and cause issues with power outages, said weather service meteorologist Ryan Walbrun.

Storms were expected to start this morning and dump up to 3 inches of rain in coastal areas of Sonoma County and a bit less as rain moves southward to the San Francisco area and into the Santa Cruz mountains, Walbrun said.

“It’s a pretty significant rain for this early in the season,” he said, adding that the storms are forecast to last through at least Monday and would make commutes wet with slick roads.

PEGGY FAGERSTROM AP Two men walk through rushing water on Front Street, just a half block from the Bering Sea, in Nome, Alaska, on Saturday.