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Town Hall Planned to Discuss Alaska Arrow-3 Missile Testing for Israel

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Officials from the spaceport on Kodiak Island will host a town hall meeting Wednesday to answer questions about the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s plans to test a U.S.-Israeli anti-ballistic missile system in Alaska.

Testing of the Arrow-3 missile system will begin in 2018, the Kodiak Daily Mirror reported. The system was developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing, and is co-managed by the Missile Defense Agency and the Israel Missile Defense Organization.

It will be part of the five- to six-year, $80.4 million contract between Alaska Aerospace Corporation and the Missile Defense Agency, which was announced last summer, Alaska Aerospace CEO Craig Campbell said. (Read more from “Town Hall Planned to Discuss Alaska Arrow-3 Missile Testing for Israel” HERE)

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Kodiak Man Arrested in Killings of Two Coast Guard Workers

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photo credit: jkbrooks85ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A former coworker has been arrested for fatally shooting two U.S. Coast Guard employees last year on Kodiak Island in Alaska, federal officials said on Friday.

James Michael Wells of Kodiak will appear in federal court sometime next week in Anchorage to face charges of killing Coast Guard electricians Mate First Class James Hopkins and retired Chief Boatswain’s Mate Richard Belisle, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Hopkins and Belisle were shot dead on April 12 at the Coast Guard’s communications station on Kodiak Island, part of the large Coast Guard base complex on that Alaska island. Hopkins was an enlisted Guard member and Belisle was a civilian employee.

Wells, a civilian, worked with the victims in 2011 at a Coast Guard project on Shemya Island in the Aleutians, according to the Coast Guard.

Read more from this story HERE.

Coast Guardsman Plunges 1000 Feet to His Death in Kodiak

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A Coast Guardsman slipped on an icy trail and plunged 1,000 feet to his death while hiking a treacherous Alaskan mountain in search of its legendary vistas.

Derek Winn Russell, 20, disappeared Saturday morning after attempting to climb Mount Barometer, which is near the Coast Guard base on Kodiak Island where he was posted. Rescuers found his ice ax and skid marks 2,200 feet up the 2,450-foot mountain on Christmas Day. His body was discovered 1,000 feet below that point a few hours later.

Officials believe he slipped and fell to his death while descending the mountain, the Portland Press Herald reported.

Mr Russell, a native of Maine, was not reported missing for 36 hours because his roommates didn’t realize he hadn’t come back from his hike until Sunday night. A rescue party scoured the mountain that night, but was turned back by a snowstorm that hit the dangerous mountain.

Mount Barometer is a popular climb and in summer the trail to the summit can be attempted by casual hikers. It has become popular for its spectacular views of the remote Kodiak Island. In winter, ice and snow can make hiking treacherous and strong winds create bone-chilling temperatures.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pilot Advisory: Volcanic Ash Over Kodiak, Alaska, But It’s 100 Years Old

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Photo credit: National Park ServiceAlaska Public Radio reported last night that

There was volcanic ash in the air over the Shelikof Straight and parts of Kodiak Island yesterday. A person in Port Lions called KMXT to ask if a volcano had erupted, but the Alaska Volcano Observatory showed all was normal. However, it turned out that a volcano had erupted, though it wasn’t yesterday – it was almost exactly 100 years ago.

The National Weather Service office in Anchorage reported that ash from the Novarupta explosion in 1912 was being whipped up by strong northerly winds because of a lack of snow cover in the Valley of 10,000 Smokes and Katmai National Park on the Alaska Peninsula.

Fox News added that

The ash drifted up to about 4,000 feet and traveled over the Shelikof Strait and across Kodiak Island, prompting an aviation alert. The news was first reported by KMXT radio.

Weather service meteorologist Brian Hagenbuch said it isn’t unheard of for ash from Novarupta to create a haze, but it isn’t very common either. Winds in the area were blowing about 35 to 40 mph, with gusts of more than 52 mph.

Officials first picked up the haze on a weather camera Tuesday when the sun was rising. “It looked very foggy. … It was kind of a curious thing,” Hagenbuch said. “We didn’t expect fog there.”

As the day got lighter, the haze took on a “brownish, smog-type look,” he said.

A satellite image showed a “milky white plume” spreading out from the northern Alaska peninsula, and authorities later confirmed the existence of ash particles, he said.

The Katmai National Park website describes the “famed Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes,” the area from where the ash was blown, as

a spectacular forty square mile, 100 to 700 foot deep ash flow deposited by Novarupta Volcano in 1912. A National Park & Preserve since 1980, today Katmai is still famous for volcanoes, but also for brown bears, pristine waterways with abundant fish, remote wilderness, and a rugged coastline.