ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A storm forecast to be one of the worst on record in Alaska lashed the state’s western coastline on Wednesday, tearing roofs off buildings and sending surges of water and debris into communities, authorities said.

The storm, which began hitting Alaska late on Tuesday after building over the North Pacific Ocean, brought winds measured at up to 89 miles an hour and early flooding to the remote communities and Native villages along the coastline.

There have been no reports of injuries, and damage tallied so far has been caused largely by wind and includes reports of tin roofs flying off and power lines down, said Andy Brown, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

Water surges of seven to nine feet are expected to peak in the afternoon, Brown said.

Most of western Alaska is at high risk, from the Yupik Eskimo community of Bethel in the Yukon-Kuskowim delta to the Inupiat Eskimo village of Wainwright on the North Slope, according to the National Weather Service.

But one of the hardest-hit areas so far has been Nome, a former Gold Rush boomtown famous as the end of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and surrounding villages.

There, the storm tossed debris onto roads, making driving dangerous, city officials reported. Waves have launched “fist-sized rocks” and logs up to two feet in diameter onto the roadway, officials said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A Kenyan student athlete at the University of Alaska, Anchorage who went missing in a snowstorm this week walked into a campus area hotel on Wednesday suffering from hypothermia, police said.

Marko Cheseto, a two-time NCAA All-American runner whose disappearance prompted an intensive search, walked into the hotel at about 3 a.m. on Wednesday, the university said in a statement.

He was taken to a local hospital, where he is receiving treatment.

Authorities did not yet know what happened to Cheseto over the past two days, said Rick Shell, chief of the university police department. He had last been seen on Sunday evening leaving a campus building wearing a light coat.

“We’re really more concerned with his medical treatment,” Shell said.

Authorities began searching for Cheseto, from Kapenguria, Kenya, on Monday after his roommates reported him missing.

Police had said there were concerns that he had gone for a run and become disoriented in the snow. Searchers, using dogs, snowmobiles and a helicopter, combed the wooded area around the university, including the trails favored by local runners.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An “epic” storm was bearing down on western Alaska on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said, warning that it could be one of the worst on record for the state.

The storm, moving inland from the Aleutian Islands, was expected to bring hurricane-force winds with gusts up to 100 miles per hour, heavy snowfall, widespread coastal flooding and severe erosion to most of Alaska’s west coast, the National Weather Service said.

“This will be an extremely dangerous and life threatening storm of an epic magnitude rarely experienced,” the service said in a special warning message.

Nome and the rest of the Seward Peninsula, a section of land that juts out toward Siberia, were expected to be the hardest-hit areas, said Andy Brown, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

Powerful storms in the North Pacific and Bering Sea are common this time of year, but this event is unusual because of its trajectory, Brown said.

“It’s going very far north,” he said.

Officials in Nome issued an evacuation order late on Tuesday for people living along Front Street, a beachside avenue that serves as the finish line for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and for other low-lying areas in town.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – An “epic” storm was bearing down on western Alaska on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said, warning that it could be one of the worst on record for the state.

The storm, moving inland from the Aleutian Islands, was expected to bring hurricane-force winds with gusts up to 100 miles per hour, heavy snowfall, widespread coastal flooding and severe erosion to most of Alaska’s west coast, the National Weather Service warned.

“This will be an extremely dangerous and life threatening storm of an epic magnitude rarely experienced,” the service said in a special warning message on Tuesday.

Nome and the rest of the Seward Peninsula, a section of land that juts out toward Siberia, are expected to be the hardest-hit areas, said Andy Brown, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

Powerful storms in the North Pacific and Bering Sea are common this time of year, but this event is unusual because of its trajectory, Brown said.

“It’s going very far north,” he said.

Posing an additional threat is the lack of sea ice off northwestern Alaska, he said. The last time a storm of a similar magnitude was sent in the same northward direction was 1974, but the sea surface was much more frozen then, he said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A search team with dogs scoured the woods around the University of Alaska at Anchorage on Monday for a Kenyan student athlete who went missing in a heavy snowstorm, police and school officials said.

Marko Cheseto, a star runner recruited by the university’s cross-country team, was last seen on Sunday evening near the campus library, the school said in a statement. Snow was falling heavily at the time, and officials were concerned that he might have succumbed to exposure.

“He is likely not dressed for freezing temperatures,” the university’s statement said.

A search team was assembled and combed the wooded areas around the campus, including numerous cross-country trails, Lieutenant Dave Parker of the Anchorage Police Department said.

Authorities found no clues on Monday as to Cheseto’s whereabouts and suspended the search at nightfall but planned to resume their efforts on Tuesday morning, Parker said.

Cheseto was a close friend of another Kenyan athlete on the University of Alaska team, William Ritekwiang, who committed suicide last February. Both runners were from the same Kenyan village, Kapenguria.

Cheseto’s disappearance comes as a separate and more dangerous storm was bearing down on the western coast of Alaska.

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – A U.S. Army specialist who was arrested at a military base in Alaska last month on suspicion of spying was formally charged on Monday with attempted espionage, an Army spokesman said.

Specialist William Colton Millay, 22, was also charged with failing to obey regulations, issuing false statements, solicitation and communicating defense information, Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bill Coppernoll said in a written statement.

Coppernoll said Millay was accused of communicating and transmitting unclassified national defense information to an individual he believed was a foreign intelligence agent, with the intent to aid a foreign nation.

Coppernoll said last week that Millay, a military policeman, was caught before he could spread information that would damage national interests. No charges were expected against anyone else.

“I think we’re safe at this time with Millay,” he said.

The Army has not said which foreign nation Millay was suspected of attempting to spy for or what sensitive information he may have had access to.

Coppernoll has emphasized that his arrest was unrelated to the WikiLeaks case, in which Army Private Bradley Manning was charged with downloading classified information and passing some of it to WikiLeaks.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Escopeta Oil Company LLC, a Houston-based independent, has discovered what it estimates to be 3.5 trillion cubic feet (99 billion cubic metres) of natural gas at a prospect in southern Alaska’s Cook Inlet, a company official said on Saturday.

The estimate is based on results of a single well and represents in-place reserves, not recoverable reserves, said Bruce Webb, a company vice president in Alaska. “Usually the recoverable reserves are somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 80 percent of gas in place,” he said.

The discovery, at the offshore Kitchen Lights unit, appears to be the biggest in 25 years in Cook Inlet, said Escopeta, which is privately held. The basin is Alaska’s oldest producing oil and gas region, with production dating back to the 1950s, and it supplies natural gas mostly to regional markets in and around Anchorage.

Webb said Escopeta plans further exploration drilling, through at least 2014, and will also test deeper oil-prone levels.

Escopeta’s well was drilled from a jack-up rig that the company shipped to Alaska on a foreign-flagged vessel, in violation of federal maritime law. Escopeta had hoped to win a Jones Act waiver from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security while the rig was in transit, but that did not materialize, Webb said.

For its Jones Act violation, Escopeta faces a $15 million fine assessed last month by the Department of Homeland Security, he said. “We rolled the dice and took the chance. It didn’t work out. So now we’re subject to the penalty,” he said.

The company hopes to convince the department to reduce the fine, he said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A U.S. soldier at an Alaska military base arrested on suspicion of espionage was caught before he could spread information that would damage national interests, an Army spokesman said on Wednesday.

Specialist William Colton Millay, a 22-year-old military policeman from Owensboro, Kentucky, was being watched closely prior to his arrest last Friday, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll said.

“Any information that might have been transferred was stopped,” thanks to coordination between Army and civilian law enforcement agencies, Coppernoll said. “Millay was being observed well before any damage could have occurred.”

Coppernoll did not say who Millay was suspected of spying for or what sensitive information he may have had access to, but said the arrest was unrelated to the WikiLeaks case, in which Army Private Bradley Manning is charged with downloading classified information and passing some of it to WikiLeaks.

“While we can’t go into any specifics, this is completely different than the Bradley Manning case in that it does not involve the transfer of data on computer networks,” he said.

Military charges against Millay were expected to be brought this week under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Coppernoll said. The case was expected to be prosecuted in Alaska, he said.

Millay was arrested following a joint espionage investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Army Counterintelligence special agents. He was being held without bail at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, a state-operated jail where he has been since Friday, a jail spokesman said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A U.S. Army specialist from Kentucky who was serving as a military policeman has been arrested at an Alaska military base on suspicion of spying, an Army spokesman said on Tuesday.

Specialist William Colton Millay, 22, was taken into custody at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on October 28 following a joint espionage investigation conducted by the FBI and Army Counterintelligence special agents, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll said.

Coppernoll did not say who Millay, of Owensboro, Kentucky, was suspected of spying for or what sensitive information he may have had access to. He said the investigation was ongoing.

FBI spokesman Special Agent Eric Gonzalez said the case would be tried in military courts.

He also said the arrest was not related to the WikiLeaks case, in which U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning is charged with downloading more than 150,000 diplomatic cables and passing some of them to Wikileaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

“It’s unrelated, forget WikiLeaks,” Gonzalez told Reuters.

A spokesman for the Anchorage Correctional Complex said that Millay was being held there on a federal charge. Millay is assigned to the 164th Military Police Company, 793rd Military Police Battalion, 2nd Engineer Brigade.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Alaska Governor Sean Parnell said on Thursday that a plan to build a massive natural gas pipeline from Alaska through Canada should be dumped in favor of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project that would ship gas to the Pacific Rim.

TransCanada Corp and partner Exxon Mobil Corp have been unable to win customers for the 1,700-mile (2,735 km) natural gas pipeline they propose to build from Alaska’s North Slope to Alberta.

The companies’ plan, which has a price tag of up to $41 billion, is doomed by a major shift in natural-gas markets, said Parnell.

Booming shale gas production in the mainland United States is glutting markets there, while the Japan tsunami and other factors have created supply crunches in Asia, Parnell said, at an Alaska Oil and Gas Association conference in Anchorage.

“If market demand for gas has truly shifted from the Lower 48 to Pacific Rim markets, then the state of Alaska should be ready to shift along with that,” said Parnell.

He said his call for a different pipeline plan — a departure from the state’s official position since the late 1990s — reflects frustration with lack of progress.

“I don’t think people in Alaska are going to wait forever to determine if the Lower 48 is going to generate demand for a pipeline,” Parnell told reporters after his speech.