National Weather Service Hydrologist Celine van Breukelen has been flying up and down the river since April 30 to keep track of what’s happening as the ice breaks up. So far, she hasn’t seen any major jamming or flooding. She said that cool temperatures and overnight freezing are slowing down breakup this spring on most of the Kuskokwim River.
”The system has enough momentum to keep on moving even if we have a day or two of colder temperatures. It’s not suddenly going to go back to winter,” said van Breukelen.
Ice in the middle river is starting to shift, and van Breukelen said that she is zeroing in on an area around Crooked Creek where ice jams have caused flooding in the past.
On May 3, the ice was still solid between Crooked Creek and Chuathbaluk. Below Aniak, the river is open for roughly 15 miles to Crow Village.
Van Breukelen said that the ice below Kalskag shifted sometime between the morning and the afternoon of May 3. “Downstream of Kalskag, that ice was still one piece. But then by our afternoon flight, we noticed where the sheets of ice had actually separated. And that’s noteworthy because that means those sheets of ice are actually strong enough to separate versus just crumpling,” she said.
Van Breukelen will keep eyes on those ice sheets as they move downriver. They’re headed for a 20 mile stretch along the Kuskokwim between lower Kalskag and an area known as "the bluffs," where the ice remains solid.
“The good news is that there are two old rivers to the west of the mainstem Kuskokwim, and those act as pressure release valves for some of the jam points on the main Kuskokwim,” van Breukelen said. “Those have been opening up, and there is less and less ice. There's still is some ice, but it’s no longer that original, very consolidated original ice there anymore.”
Downstream of Tuluksak all the way to Bethel, the ice has been degrading in place for weeks. The Kuskokwim Ice Classic tripod in front of Bethel came down on May 1, but the clock hasn’t stopped ticking.
