As of the afternoon of Saturday, May 9, Aniak remains under a flood warning after water backed up by an ice jam around 11 miles downriver inundated low-lying areas in the community. Hydrologist Johnse Ostman with the National Weather Service said that the effects have been relatively minor so far.
“What's nice is that there really were not a lot of impacts, and there was no interruption in flight schedules,” Ostman said.
One Aniak resident took advantage of the high water to paddle a kayak around her yard on the night of Friday, May 8. Earlier the same day, onlookers were thrilled as a 30-foot tower of ice suddenly rose up from the riverbank when a massive slab of ice slammed into a reinforced dike near the center of town.
A similar situation is playing out roughly 200 miles upriver at McGrath, where the ice went out on the evening of Friday, May 8. Ostman said that it ran for about an hour, and then jammed up downstream at Father’s Day Slough. A flood watch is in effect for McGrath until the evening of Sunday, May 10.
Below McGrath, Ostman said that a roughly 80-mile stretch of ice has yet to break up and be flushed downriver. He said that he’s not overly concerned about it.
“Should still be about a week before we see that, and hopefully by that time everything here is gone,” Ostman said.
The biggest question right now is what happens to ice currently jammed up near Birch Crossing, roughly 11 miles downriver of Aniak.
“Our concerns right now are what happens when this ice run at Aniak lets go,” Ostman said.
Ostman said the jam remained in place all day on May 8 against several large sheets of intact, original ice. That jam could cause issues downriver for both Upper Kalskag and Lower Kalskag, where Ostman said that the main channel ice is intact, but steadily melting.
Elsewhere on the river, especially the more than 100 miles between Kalskag and the Johnson River below Bethel, Ostman said that there is a variety of intact ice, ice rotting in place, and open water. It’s been a shift from the much more dangerous, dynamic breakup that had been forecast for the Kuskokwim River based on above-average snowfall and thick ice.
“We're kind of in this mush-out regime. I think we've accepted, for the most part, that we're in a thermal versus a dynamic system of breakup this year,” Ostman said.
At the Kwethluk “Y,” where the river branches toward Kwethluk and Akiachak, Ostman said that the river is mushing out. He said that intact ice had shifted and melted at Akiachak, and that Kwethluk had almost completely broken up as of the afternoon of Saturday, May 9.
Ostman said that there is still plenty of original, intact ice in the roughly 20 miles from Bethel down to the mouth of the Johnson River, but that there are plenty of patches of open water. He said that during his flight on Friday, May 8, he saw more open water at the mouth of the Johnson River than he can ever remember. He said that it’s encouraging.
“It is, again, like, thermally mushing out and degrading, so pretty exciting for the whole lower Kuskokwim right now. We're fully in breakup,” Ostman said.
Catch the latest on the Kuskokwim River breakup by tuning in to KYUK 640AM for River Watch updates on Sunday at 10 a.m. and weekdays at 8:40 a.m. until breakup has ended. Also check the River Breakup Updates tab on our website for the latest announcements.
