December 24, 2004
A deadly storm is approaching, and KNOM broadcasts ten minutes of weather warnings every hour. The gale strikes at 11 PM, dropping visibility to near zero until suppertime Christmas Day. Residents estimate that, as it funnels and gusts around the buildings of Nome, the wind’s velocity exceeds 80 MPH.
December 18, 1992
KNOM volunteer music director John Albers suddenly finds himself in a red suit, filling in for an ailing Santa. John portrays the jolly old elf on a National Guard flight to the village of Elim, about 100 miles east of Nome.
Alaska’s Mount Redoubt began erupting in late 1989 and continued to erupt for months afterward; this photo was taken in April 1990.
December 15, 1989
489 miles southeast of Nome, the Mount Redoubt volcano erupts, spewing great clouds of sulfurous volcanic sand and dust into the air.
While the debris drifts away from Nome, the corrosive billows of grit ground airplanes in Anchorage, western Alaska’s supply hub. Grocery shelves grow bare, holiday presents are missing, and Nome’s mailboxes lay empty for a week. For the next four months, Redoubt’s periodic ash clouds disrupt flights to and from Nome.
December 3, 1986
A storm this week deposits ice the thickness of cucumbers on the KNOM tower and its guy wires, which sag dangerously. The tower is in imminent danger of collapsing.
Tower expert Rod Ewing immediately flies in from Wasilla, Alaska to supervise Timothy Cochran and Tom Busch as they strain to keep the structure standing by carefully tightening the stretched guys, one by one. “It was close,” Timothy relates.
Visible for miles, KNOM’s current Christmas star sits at the very top of our FM transmitter tower in midtown Nome.
November 26, 1970
A 3-foot, lighted Christmas star tops the 49-foot studio tower. Like five successors over the years, it is blown apart by wind before the end of the holidays.
(The star’s modern successor – pictured at right – has proven to be much more wind-resistant!)
November 22, 1970
After three weeks of blizzards and winds, the weather has briefly cleared.
Volunteers John Pfeifer and Tom Busch are belted to the AM tower at the 95-foot level, and eight others on the ground hoist the microwave receive antenna, which the pair install. Weather closes in again, and work can’t resume for two more days.
November 14, 1997
Contractor Randy Pomeranz begins to fabricate the walls for the KNOM transmitter site’s generator shed. Time – and the remaining days of temperate weather – are running out, and the 66-kilowatt generator is waiting to be installed.
The old KNOM dormitory known (somewhat) affectionately as “The Crooked House.”
November 6, 1990
One or two swings with a sledgehammer are enough to take down entire four-foot sections of the walls of the old volunteer women’s dormitory nicknamed the “Crooked House.”
With most of the wall structure gone, Br. Ray Berube, FIC, hopes to pull over the sagging roof. However, the building is weaker than he thought, and it begins to lean perilously in the direction of St. Joseph Church, just eight feet away. Nome resident Jim West, Jr. leaps to the rescue. With a small bulldozer, he nudges the building toward an open area, and it collapses into several pieces.
October 31, 1970
The AM tower construction is complete. Nome Joint Utilities runs a power line across the tundra to the tower, and it is lighted. It’s finished just in time. Two days later, blizzards shut down Nome for almost three weeks.
