Minor Chukchi surge hits Kivalina and Red Dog Dock

Water along the Chukchi Sea coast is forecast to rise 1 to 1.5 feet above the normal high tide line late Sunday night, pushed by a cold front and northwest gusts of 25 to 35 mph across Kotzebue Sound. It should peak overnight and fall back quickly Monday morning.

By Arctic standards the surge is minor — a fraction of the 5-plus feet that Typhoon Merbok drove ashore in September 2022, when Kotzebue and Kivalina lost power. What makes even a small rise worth watching is where it lands.

The National Weather Service named Kivalina and Red Dog Dock, the Baldwin Peninsula, the northern Seward Peninsula, and Shishmaref. Red Dog Dock is the shipping point for one of the world's largest zinc mines, where ore concentrate is barged out across an open, unprotected roadstead — the kind of operation that wind and surf can halt. It sits beside Kivalina, a village so eroded that residents have voted to relocate. Shishmaref, on Sarichef Island, has voted to move inland as well, a relocation estimated at $250 million.

These are coastlines where flooding and erosion are no longer events but conditions. Research near Kivalina has found the open-water season lengthening by about 5.6 days per decade, extending the window each year when storms can reach an unfrozen, unprotected shore.

The weather statement expires at 4 p.m. Sunday.