"Attu"

The volcanoes are all at elevated alert levels — geologists’ way to say the trio is erupting, but there’s no immediate cause for concern.

The volcano is on an uninhabited island in the Rat Islands, about 600 miles southwest of Unalaska.

The collision of a warm, wet weather front with a mass of cold air from Siberia could set a new record: the lowest barometric pressure recorded in the North Pacific. 

The Aleutian Islands served as the battleground for some of the bloodiest conflicts on American soil since the Civil War. But most people have never heard of the Battle of Attu, the invasion of Kiska, or even the Aleutian campaign. A Japanese filmmaker wants to change that.

Scientists have finished another research season without solving the 40-year-old mystery of the Steller sea lion decline in the Aleutian Islands. But this summer, a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may have found a new clue.

“It’s like a living museum to go there and to see how things were,” said Karen Abel, granddaughter of a Royal Canadian Air Force veteran of World War II’s Aleutian campaign. “And to see the guns. You get to touch them and feel them and see where they were placed in action. It’s not in a museum. It’s not behind glass. It was exactly as it was then.”

Attu is scheduled for what may be the first of many stages of cleanup — but it’s unlikely the military will ever be able to turn back the clock to a time before conflict.

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Attu Island is overdue for some spring cleaning. Seventy years after World War II, the island is still littered with shards of old Coke bottles, lead-based batteries, leaking fuel drums and unexploded artillery.