Alaska's Aleutian Islands Slammed By Near Record Strong Storm

Beautiful visible satellite photo of a massive storm this
weekend near Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
Photo from the Japan Meteorological Agency.  

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is the season of strong, windy, snowy storms, as most of us know.

In the Aleutian Islands, that chain of islands that extends from Alaska westward into the North Pacific  toward Russia, the storms tend to make even the biggest ones we experience in the Lower 48 just trifles of breezes and flurries.

One of the strongest Aleutian storms was raging Sunday morning. In the community of Adak, winds at midnight were sustained at 95 mph gusting to 123 mph. Sustained winds of over hurricane force were almost continuous for at least five hours overnight.

I've never seen a reporting weather station show such incredible winds except in the heart of some of the strongest late summer and early autumn hurricanes coming ashore.  Those gusts are also about the same as the highest gusts on record for Adak, which is 125 mph

The cause of Adak's winds, and a wide area of blizzards and destructive winds in southwestern Alaska, is a storm system that might set records for the lowest barometric pressure observed in the region.

Atmospheric pressure is a good measure of how strong a storm is. The lower the pressure, the stronger the storm, at least almost all the time.

According to Accuweather, the storm Sunday morning had a central pressure of 924 millibars or 27.29 inches of mercury, tying the record for the lowest air pressure in an Alaskan storm on record.

The storm could strengthen a little bit more during the day Sunday.

For comparison's sake, a really bad nor'easter in New England might have a central pressure of 28.70 inches, and normal, boring weather would have us at about 30.00 inches of mercury.

It's almost always a bad idea to take a boat trip in the Bering Sea, but really so today, considering the hurricane force winds and 40 foot tall waves.

The impacts on mainland Alaska from this storm won't be as bad, since it's so far offshore, but still, blizzard conditions are expected in southwestern Alaska.

This storm won't have much of an impact on the Lower 48 but of course the continental United States is dealing with winter storms in the Rockies, flooding in the central Plains, and conditions on the East Coast ranging from record heat in the Mid-Atlantic to a winter storm watch for heavy icing and snow in northern Maine.