With the isolation of winter approaching quickly, relief efforts are in high gear across two remote Native Alaskan towns in far southwest Alaska after a devastating storm surge plowed into the coast on Sunday, October 12. The water was pushed inland by fierce onshore winds associated with the remnants of Typhoon Halong, which had gained new life as a powerful non-tropical system that raced across the Bering Sea.
More than 1,500 people have been forced from their homes, most of them in the towns of Kipnuk (pop. 715) and Kwigillingok (pop. 380), according to the Associated Press. Officials said that a total of 49 communities were affected.
At least one death has been confirmed, and two other people were missing as of late Tuesday local time, all three from Kwigillingok, the New York Times reported, adding that much of the region’s cellphone service was down. There is no road access to the area from other parts of Alaska, so residents have been forced to seek shelter where they can. Some have been flown to the larger city of Bethel, while many others have been improvising, including hundreds at school shelters.
The storm surge at Kipnuk reached 6.6 feet over mean higher high water (the typical highest daily tide), which was nearly two feet above the previous record of 4.7 feet set on November 13, 2000. The surge was high enough to push water into many, if not most, of Kipnuk’s structures.
At a Monday press conference covered by Alaska Public Media, the Western Alaska commander for the U.S. Coast Guard, Captain Christopher Culpepper, painted a dire picture: “Several of these villages have been completely devastated, absolutely flooded, several feet deep….This took homes off of foundations. This took people into peril, where folks were swimming, floating, trying to find debris to hold onto in the cover of darkness.”
The head of Alaska’s state emergency management center, Mark Roberts, said: “The folks that were in houses that were floating and didn’t know where they were was one of the most tragic things our folks in the state EOC have ever faced.”
The setup that led to the Alaska flooding
Halong was a powerful typhoon that peaked well south of Japan on October 8 as the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. Halong weakened quickly, its winds down to Cat 1 strength by October 9 as it recurved eastward before reaching the Japanese coast. By October 10, Halong was declared post-tropical.
Over the next several days, a strong upper-level jet curving around an intense upper low in the western Bering Sea caught the remnants of Halong and pivoted them in a huge loop, first eastward and then northward, reaching the Bering Sea by October 12 and coming ashore near Nome with a central pressure of around 964 millibars (hPa). The dynamical influence of the upper low, together with unusually warm sea surface temperatures over the far North Pacific (see Fig. 1), helped the remnants of Halong to re-strengthen.
Forecast models had predicted the post-Halong cyclone to track considerably further away from the Alaska coast than it actually did. The storm’s track and intensity weren’t clear until less than 36 hours before its impacts, which didn’t allow enough time for evacuation in many areas, explained Alaskan weather expert Rick Thoman in a superb essay for The Conversation. As Thoman also notes, a major reduction in weather balloon launches since February over much of this region – a consequence of National Weather Service budget cuts – might have affected the forecast quality, although it will take further digging to assess this.
Notable peak wind gusts, as summarized by the CIMSS Satellite Blog, included 80 kts (92 mph) at St. George (PAPB) in the Bering Sea at 0615 UTC, 75 kts (86 mph) at Cape Newingham (PAEH) along the southwest coast of Alaska at 0915 UTC, 87 kts (100 mph) at Toksook Bay (PAOO) along the southwest coast of Alaska at 1135 UTC and 70 kts (81 mph) at St. Michael (PAMK) farther inland just south of Norton Sound at 1829 UTC.
Many winter storms in the Bering Sea have been as strong or stronger than this past weekend’s. However, the long trajectory of Halong’s remnants, their sudden re-intensification, and the distinctive track of the emerging storm led to a nearly ideal setup for pushing a long fetch of high water and damaging storm surge toward the southwest Alaskan coast. Reflecting on the unusual nature of the event, Thoman said on Bluesky: “We’re trying to assess whether this was the strongest storm on record to move from (just) west of the Pribilof Islands northeast through Shpanberg Strait, between St. Lawrence Island and the Yukon delta. I have no memory of a sub-970 hPa low following such track.”
A state report last year warned of serious flood risks facing Kipnuk
It’s been known for years that the Native Alaskan communities of coastal southwest Alaska, and Kipnuk in particular, are at increasing risk for storm surge damage. Kipnuk is known in the Yup’ik language as Qipneq, meaning “bend in the river.” The town sits about four miles inland from the Bering Sea in the broad Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
In September 2024, the state of Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources issued the report “Coastal Flood Impact Assessment for Kipnuk, Alaska.” The report notes that at least 30 flood incidents have struck the town since 1979, including two ice jam floods and two snowmelt floods in addition to numerous storm surges. Disasters were declared in 1979, 1982, 2006, 2009, 2015, and 2022. Three of those events produced storm-surge flooding that ranked as “major”:
- November 13, 2000: 4.7 feet above mean higher high water (MHHW)
- October 28, 2026: 4.4 feet
- December 19, 2015: 4.0 feet
The 6.6 feet above MHHW recorded on Sunday is the first modern-day flood in Kipnuk to qualify as “extreme.” At 6.2 feet, the impacts include “many buildings flooded”; at 6.4 feet, a complex of six large fuel tanks is affected. (There were reports of residents smelling fuel after Sunday’s flood hit, and investigators were looking into potential spills.) Frost heaves and compression have played increasing havoc with structures in the area, especially as warming temperatures lead to greater permafrost melt, so many structures in Kipnuk have been re-leveled or moved over the years.
Work to bolster Kipnuk’s flood defenses, related to a $20 million grant from the EPA’s Community Change Grants program, was to begin this summer. The grants are part of the EPA’s Environmental and Climate Justice Program, established in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The Track I grants, which funded the Kipnuk flood protection, are for environmental and climate justice projects that benefit disadvantaged communities through a variety of strategies related to climate change adaptation. However, as reported by the New York Times, the grant to bolster Kipnuk’s flood defenses was rescinded by the EPA in May.
Other than storm remnants, it’s been a relatively quiet year for U.S. tropical cyclone impacts
The Alaskan disaster was the second catastrophe to slam the United States this year related to the remnants of a tropical cyclone. The other was the devastating flooding that struck central Texas on and around July 4, killing around 140 people in the worst U.S. flash flood in 49 years. The torrential rains that triggered the Texas floods were fueled by moisture and a weak atmospheric disturbance associated with the northward-moving remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which had struck near Tampico, Mexico, on June 29 with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 km/h). Barry is blamed for eight deaths in Mexico, with total damages in Mexico and Belize estimated at about $32 million.
After five consecutive years (2020-2024) with a major hurricane landfall — a record-long streak matched only in 1915-1919 — the U.S. has mercifully seen a dearth of significant landfalling tropical cyclones in 2025. So far, no hurricanes and only one tropical storm have made a U.S. landfall. On average, three named storms — including one hurricane — typically make a continental U.S. landfall in a given year. With less than 15% of a typical Atlantic hurricane season’s activity occurring after Oct. 15, the odds of the U.S. escaping a hurricane landfall for the first time since 2015 look good.
This year’s only landfalling named storm so far is Tropical Storm Chantal, which hit northeastern South Carolina on July 6 with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (80 km/h). Chantal moved slowly into North Carolina, dumping heavy rains in excess of 10 inches (254 mm). Chantal caused flooding that killed three people and did damages of $500 million, according to Gallagher Re.
Barry is the only other landfalling tropical storm in the entire North Atlantic basin so far in 2025. Hurricane Imelda’s center did not directly cross any islands, but the core of the storm passed through the Bahamas and within 20 miles (32 km) of Bermuda. Imelda is being blamed for five deaths and over $10 million in damage.
READ: How to help residents and communities after catastrophic Western Alaska storm (Anchorage Daily News)
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