Wales

Location - Puvragik Lake

The village of Wales is located on the western tip of the Seward Peninsula on the Bering Strait at 65° 37.436'N, 168° 5.950'W. The observatory established there was the westernmost ALISON site in Alaska. Puvragik Lake (The Swimming Place) is located about a quarter mile north of Kingikmiut Village of Wales. Some local residents use the lake to cut ice for fresh water. The lake is shallow along the edges and deep enough in the middle to land a single engine float plane. The residents of Wales enjoy picking greens and berries close to the lake. Puvragik is one of the best places in early spring to find greens.

Wales and the Bering Strait from the air, 25 March 2004. Note the patchy surface of Puvragik Lake, where ice is exposed after the wind has eroded some of the the snow cover.

Puvragil Lake can be seen in the middle of this image. It is the large lake east of the village runway with the "flat" bottom or linear south bank just north of the road.

People

Eric Lowry in front of a razorback ridge adjacent to the Wales ALISON site.

In winters, 2004-06, the ALISON study site in Wales was run by Eric Lowry and some middle and high school age students. Eric took over the Wales study from Sue Yates, who retired at the end of the 2003-04 school year and returned to her home state of Missouri.

Eric was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, where he started delivering the Spokesman Review at the age of eight. At the age of 18 he became a full time newspaper employee and also earned two degrees – one in mathematics education, the other in computer science – before retiring from the newspaper at 29 and entering teaching. He has been a teacher for seven years, six of them in Wales.

Data

Download the data for these graphs and other ALISON data.