As it says in the article, we tend to get storms such as this one on a fairly regular basis. It's not your everyday thing, but people who have lived more than a handful of years have seen them. Consequently, people sometimes don't heed the warnings as they should. This is (was) a potentially hazardous storm. Fortunately there is some ice forming which helps to buffer the wave action. Again, fortunately, that ice is not thick enough yet to cause damage when it gets pushed up; it simply piles into slush which makes a barrier to further wave action. That isn't true in all places, of course, so some may be getting more wave or ice damage, but we haven't really had it as bad as it looked like it could get. We may still get flooding after the strong northerly push since Bering Sea water isn't going to make it through the Bering Strait very quickly. Be interesting to see who got hammered. It wasn't a good storm to be on a southerly facing coast (like Nome for example).
