ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – Alaska’s record-breaking winter snowstorms have achieved a new milestone — school closures in Valdez, a snow-tough Prince William Sound port that is on pace to beat its own season snowfall record.

This winter marks the first time in decades that Valdez schools have closed because of snow volumes, city and school district officials said. Potentially dangerous loads of snow on school roofs prompted the closures, which will be in effect until next week, officials said.

“We looked at snow loading and we looked at the need to get the snow off the roof, and it was better to close the school because things were close to that critical point,” Mayor Dave Cobb told Reuters.

The last time Valdez schools shut down because of too much snow was in the 1989-90 academic year, although there was a high-wind closure earlier this winter, Valdez School Superintendent Jacob Jensen said.

Valdez, a seaside town famous for big snow dumps each winter, is on pace to break its season record of 560.7 inches, said Bob Hopkins, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service’s Anchorage office.

Snowfall to date in Valdez is 321.5 inches, according to city officials, which already matches the season average for a town so used to snow its building code requires roofs to be extra-strong.

“They’re so prepared down there,” Hopkins said, adding that the town’s residents were usually able to shrug off massive amounts of snow. “They’re Alaskans, you know.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A fuel-laden Russian tanker and its U.S. Coast Guard escort struggled through treacherous, ice-choked seas on Wednesday to reach the frozen Alaska port of Nome with an emergency gasoline and diesel delivery, Coast Guard and shipping officials said.

The unusual mission to ice-bound Nome, now facing a fuel shortage, is the first-ever attempt at a marine delivery of fuel to western Alaska in winter.

It was organized last month after the city missed its last scheduled barge delivery of fuel, which had been slated to arrive in the fall, in a cancellation blamed on bad weather, including the worst storm to hit Alaska’s northwest coast in decades.

As of Wednesday morning, the ice-class tanker Renda, carrying 1.3 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, and the Coast Guard’s only functioning icebreaker, the cutter Healy, were plying the Bering Sea about 100 miles south of Nome, said Stacey Smith, manager of the Anchorage-based Vitus Marine company that chartered the Russian vessel.

After traveling a combined 68 miles on Sunday and Monday, the two ships actually “lost a little bit of ground” on Tuesday as shifting ice pushed the vessels back, Smith told Reuters.

Smith said it remained unclear when the ships would reach Nome, a city of 3,600. “That’s the question of the hour. Nobody’s able to answer that as of yet,” she said. “Each day is very, very different.”

Bringing the Renda and Healy to port is only “half of our mission,” Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley said. “We’ve got to get two ships to Nome, then we’ve got to ensure the safe transfer of oil. … And then we have to get both ships back out to the open water.”

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – Alaska state officials closed the sole highway leading south out of Anchorage on Tuesday because of high winds, avalanche dangers and blowing snow, temporarily isolating two small communities.

Closures of the Seward Highway from Alaska’s largest city and the Whittier Tunnel, a passage used alternatively by cars and Alaska Railroad trains, blocked access to the ski resort community of Girdwood and the Prince William Sound port town of Whittier.

The move was due to two avalanches along the highway and avalanche-control work, said Rick Feller, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

The department will reopen the highway if weather and avalanche conditions allow, he said. No injuries were reported from the avalanches.

In Girdwood, a community of about 2,200, the highway problems forced cancellation of school bus service and Alyeska Resort’s ski lifts and trails were closed due to high winds, said Bill Chadwick, chief of the local fire department.

There has been no request for a shelter to house stranded travelers, Chadwick said. Anyone stuck in Girdwood can take refuge at the high-end resort hotel, he said.

“They’ve got warm rooms and food and they take a whole lot better care of you than we can sleeping on the floor of the elementary school,” Chadwick said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – National Guardsman were helping residents of the Prince William Sound fishing town of Cordova dig out on Monday following weeks of storms that have left parts of the town buried in more than 10 feet of snow.

More than 50 Guardsmen helped shovel snow off roofs, while heavy equipment barged in Sunday on night was being put to work moving and disposing of the snow, state officials said.

Following several slides, avalanche experts were also on their way to assess those dangers, the officials said.

Officials in the town of 2,200 people last week declared the snowbound city a disaster, triggering the state assistance.

“In Cordova, they’ve just been at this for two, three solid weeks of hitting one storm after another,” said Jeremy Zidek, an Anchorage-based spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. “They’re worn out. They don’t have a lot of places to store snow.”

The major safety hazards in Cordova are collapsed roofs and avalanches, though there are other issues such as clearing snow away from heating systems to avoid a build-up of carbon-monoxide, Zidek said.

Roofs have collapsed at three commercial buildings, including a restaurant.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The chief executives of BP and ConocoPhillips, two of Alaska’s three major oil producers, said on Thursday that the only viable way to commercialize the vast but stranded quantity of Alaska’s North Slope natural gas is to export it to Asian Pacific markets.

The BP and ConocoPhillips CEOs said they will work with Exxon Mobil, the third major North Slope oil producer, to develop an LNG project that would export to Asia, a dramatic change from decades-old plans to send North Slope natural gas by overland pipeline to domestic U.S. markets.

BP CEO Bob Dudley and ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva made the comments to reporters after an unprecedented meeting in Anchorage of the chief executives of all three major North Slope oil producers.

Exxon, whose CEO Rex Tillerson also attended the meeting, said the parties are in early discussions on an export plan, but added that the pipeline plan through Canada is still under consideration.

North American producers and LNG shippers are scrambling to develop export plants after a sudden surge in domestic natural gas production, thanks to shale gas, swamped the market and pushed gas prices way below global levels.

Once expected to be a major importer, the United States now has up to a century’s worth of supply, prompting plans to ship the cheap fuel to thirsty markets in Europe and Asia where prices are up to five times higher.

Five projects across the United States and two in western Canada have applied for construction and export licenses, seeking long term deals predominantly with buyers in Asia.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An Navy veteran accused of giving a fatal dose of heroin to a 14-year-old girl had previously injected another teenaged girl with the drug, local police said on Wednesday.

Sean Warner already faces manslaughter charges in the death of Jena Dolstad, a high-school freshman who died on December 29 after spending several days in a local hospital on life support.

Investigators probing the case said Warner injected an older girl with the drug earlier in December, police said.

“There is another victim, a 17-year-old female, who was also injected over the last month multiple times,” Anchorage Police Department Lieutenant Dave Parker said.

That girl, whose name was not released by authorities, was not hospitalized or given medical treatment, he said.

Dolstad was found unconscious and lying in her own vomit on Warner’s bed on the morning of December 23, according to court documents.

Warner was arrested two days later and charged with drug-related crimes, tampering with evidence and theft.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An Anchorage man accused of injecting a 14-year-old girl with heroin was indicted for manslaughter on Tuesday, five days after she died from an overdose, an Anchorage police spokesman said.

Sean Warner, 26, was indicted on one count of manslaughter by a state grand jury, Anchorage Police Lieutenant Dave Parker said, adding that an additional charge could still be filed against Warner.

Warner was arrested last month on drug-related charges after 14-year-old Jena Dolstad, a high school student, was found overdosed and lying on Warner’s bed in her own vomit, according to a charging document.

She died in a local hospital, where she never regained consciousness and was kept on life support for days, Anchorage police said.

Dolstad had been at a gathering at Warner’s house the previous night and had asked to try heroin, but was unwilling to inject herself, the charging document said. Warner then injected the drug, but warned her of the dangers of addiction, according to a witness account included in the court papers.

When Dolstad was found the next morning, Warner waited several hours before calling for assistance, the charging document said, adding that he also tried to hide heroin-related evidence.

Warner is a former Navy medic who served in Afghanistan, his aunt and uncle told local KTUU-TV, saying that Warner had returned from Afghanistan using heroin and suffering from post-traumatic stress.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Scientists were watching a remote Alaska volcano on Friday, a day after it belched out an ash cloud that quickly dissipated, and officials said airline flights over the region had not been disrupted.

Ash from the 5,676-foot (1,730-metre) Cleveland Volcano is considered potentially dangerous to aircraft because the peak lies directly below commercial flight paths between Asia and North America. Another ash-producing explosion could come without warning.

Thursday’s explosion at the Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian Islands sent a plume 15,000 feet (5,000 metres) into the air, but it dissipated within hours, said Cheryl Searcy, a geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

“It was a pretty small little burp out of it,” Searcy said. “As of now, we have not had any more of those.”

The volcano, located 940 miles (1,500 km) southwest of Anchorage in a remote area where scientists lack on-site monitoring instruments, sent ash clouds as high as 39,000 feet (12,000 metres) in 2001.

“So it is possible that it really can put a major plume” into the atmosphere, Searcy said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus said all airlines with operations in the U.S. Northwest were notified of the eruption, but he was not aware of any planes being diverted or deviating from flight plans as a result.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An ice-breaking Russian tanker won an exemption from U.S. maritime law on Friday allowing it to deliver fuel to the isolated Alaska city of Nome, the state’s two U.S. senators announced.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security granted a Jones Act waiver to the Russian ship, the Renda, which is scheduled to deliver diesel fuel and gasoline to the Alaska city of 3,600 people, the senators said.

Senator Mark Begich said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano responded to pleas for a Jones Act exception to help alleviate what could be a serious winter fuel shortage.

“This is great news for Nome residents who either faced a long, cold winter or soaring energy costs,” Begich said in a written statement.

“This decision also recognizes Nome’s key strategic position adjacent to the Bering Straits as well as the Coast Guard’s need for maintained facilities to monitor our northern border,” he said.

If successful, the voyage will provide the first ever marine delivery of petroleum products to a western Alaska city in winter, officials said.

Nome, which has no outside road connections and relies on marine vessels or aircraft for shipment of goods, missed its last regular fall delivery of 1.6 million gallons of fuel.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Scientists were watching a remote Alaska volcano on Friday, a day after it belched out an ash cloud that quickly dissipated, and officials said airline flights over the region had not been disrupted.

Ash from the 5,676-foot volcano is considered potentially dangerous to aircraft because Cleveland’s peak lies directly below commercial flight paths between Asia and North America. Another ash-producing explosion could come without warning.

Thursday’s explosion at the Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian Islands sent a plume 15,000 feet into the air, but it dissipated within hours, said Cheryl Searcy, a geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

“It was a pretty small little burp out of it,” Searcy said. “As of now, we have not had any more of those.”

The volcano, located 940 miles southwest of Anchorage in a remote area where scientists lack on-site monitoring instruments, sent ash clouds as high as 39,000 feet in 2001.

“So it is possible that it really can put a major plume” into the atmosphere, Searcy said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus said all airlines with operations in the U.S. northwest were notified of the eruption, but he was not aware of any planes being diverted or deviating from flight plans as a result.