Blizzard — Eastern Aleutians, Alaska

2021-11-27 to 2021-11-29 · Eastern Aleutians, Alaska

Event narrative

Observations in the area recorded very strong winds at Nikolski. One of the observation sites recorded east winds of 51kts with gusts up to 64 kts around 9 AM on the 28th of November. Another observation at a higher elevation and outside of the town recorded a peak wind gust to 76kts around the same time on the 28th. Visibilities at Dutch Harbor dropped to 2 miles from 10:56am-5:56pm on November 28th due to blowing snow, with a brief period of 1 mile visibility from 3:03-3:16pm. On November 30th, one of the NWS employees reached out to Unalaska Public Safety and reported the following. A person in the public confirmed conditions were bad on Sunday, and advised they send Nixle alerts to the public with all updated WWA information with each issuance. They mentioned visibility was reduced to less than half mile at times. Another report came in saying conditions were BAD. There was one other report that came in saying that visibility was intermittent all day with blowing snow, sometimes as low as 30ft. Snow was also very heavy with no fluff factor.

Wider weather episode

A rather stagnant was in place for the last couple days of November over the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. Arctic air remained entrenched over the Bering including the Eastern Aleutians. This pattern would keep the Arctic air in place with the same northerly flow throughout this time frame. However, a storm system moved northward from the North Pacific met up with this Arctic air and resulted in hazardous weather conditions (snow and blowing snow/blizzard conditions) especially for the Eastern Aleutians. The effects didn't end here though as the system spread northeastward and impacted portions of Southcentral Alaska as well.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1001874. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.