Shrinking Sea Ice

An aerial view of near-shore ocean ice near the village of Shaktoolik, Alaska.

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.

Read More

AM Transmitter Woes

The KNOM AM transmitter site, surrounded by snowy tundra.

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.

Read More

Keeping the station warm

Our new boiler

It might seem like a routine or prosaic replacement, but for a radio station in the sub-Arctic, it’s utterly crucial: last month, KNOM replaced the boiler in its studios (as pictured, mid-replacement, above). Our studio boiler, which generates the heat for the ambient temperature of the building, had been in need of a permanent fix…

Read More

A very strange winter thaw

January thaw in Nome

The streets looked like springtime, and the air was so warm – by Alaskan standards, at least – it might have been mistaken for summer. But the date wasn’t in May or June; it was late January. On January 27th, Nome broke a high temperature record not just for the day, but for the winter…

Read More

Three years ago, ten years ago

Ric shoveling

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…

Read More

The polar vortex

With regards to weather, 2014 got off to a very strange start all throughout the United States: in Alaska as well as in the Lower 48, albeit for opposite reasons. In many places in the contiguous 48 states, a “polar vortex” weather pattern was causing abnormally frigid temperatures in early January, while in Alaska, Nome…

Read More