Chukchi coastal waters expected to become ice free within days, NWS says

Navigational waters along Alaska's Chukchi Sea coast should be ice free within days, the National Weather Service's Alaska Sea Ice Program said in a forecast issued Monday and running through Saturday.

The coastline from Utqiagvik south past Point Franklin, Icy Cape and Point Hope has already been open water. What ice remains in the region has been breaking down fast around Hanna Shoal, northwest of Utqiagvik, with what analyst Michael Lawson described as "a stream of marginal ice flowing from Hanna Shoal with the currents" toward waters north of the community.

The Beaufort is behind. Its zones remain ice covered, with a loose ice edge running from around Oliktok Point northeast past Utqiagvik. Easterly winds late this week should push that ice westward. The Bering Sea and Cook Inlet are ice free and expected to stay that way.

None of this makes it a record year. As of Aug. 30, the major Arctic-wide analyses put sea ice extent somewhere between 11th and 15th lowest on record, depending on which one you use. The Arctic minimum, the point when ice reaches its yearly low, does not usually arrive until mid-September.

An ice-free coast is also not an ice-free sea. The Chukchi as scientists define it reaches nearly to 78 degrees north, and most of the ice still floating there in September sits up near that far edge, far from Alaska's shore.