Shrinking Sea Ice
KNOM airs three daily reports of sea ice location in Western Alaska. This information has been especially important lately, as local sea ice cover has continued to decline, year over year, bringing severe impacts to our listeners.
Fire In Little Diomede Destroys One Home
The fire that erupted in a home late Friday night was mostly put out within two hours, and no one was seriously injured. It’s the second major emergency for the community in less than a month.
AM Transmitter Woes
KNOM’s AM transmitter, now in its third decade of service, is nearing the end of its usable life. As multiple outages in recent months have shown, the time has come to replace it.
Novembers Gone By
Explore a few quick looks at Novembers through the years at KNOM.
Volunteer travel
Our volunteers have been keeping busy this winter. It’s par for the course for our volunteer program, but our 2013-2014 volunteers – Dayneé, Anna Rose, Tara, Zach, and Emily – have all been putting in extra effort to reach out to the communities we serve. In January, all five volunteers were scheduled to take outreach […]
Three years ago, ten years ago
While Nome has experienced a relatively warm winter this year – with widespread melting and relatively little snow to speak of – winter in our region is, as you might expect, often the opposite. Here are two examples. In 2011, only three years ago, our snow cover – and our exposure to heavy winter storms […]
In the wake of the storm
Last November, storms brought exceptional damage to some of the communities we serve. Two separate storm systems in the Bering Sea – severe, in large part, because of their strong winds, high seas, and potential for coastal flooding – ripped through our region in less than a week. While Nome saw some relatively moderate damage, […]
October ’92: A superlative fall storm
October 5, 1992 The worst storm in eighteen years strikes Nome as a low-pressure center swells up a storm surge eight feet above normal with ten-foot waves above that. Covered with flotsam and jetsam, Front Street – Nome’s main thoroughfare – is underwater, and where it runs along the beach, half of it is gone. […]
September ’05: A “once in a hundred years” storm, again
September 22, 2005 For the second year in a row, Nome is hit by a “once in a hundred years” storm. The town loses power, and KNOM’s transmitter site generator keeps the station on the air for 134 hours until electricity is restored. General manager Ric Schmidt, on the East Coast to accept a Gabriel […]
December 2004: A Christmas storm
December 24, 2004 A deadly storm is approaching, and KNOM broadcasts ten minutes of weather warnings every hour. The gale strikes at 11 PM, dropping visibility to near zero until suppertime Christmas Day. Residents estimate that, as it funnels and gusts around the buildings of Nome, the wind’s velocity exceeds 80 MPH.