Alaska gets help during wintry weather

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- As a Russian fuel tanker slowly moves through the frozen Bering Sea toward an iced-in city in western Alaska, it has been getting help from an unusual source at its destination: a drone that flies overhead and sends images of the sea ice to researchers onshore.

The camera-equipped drone glides on 20-minute missions ranging from 10 to 320 feet above the ice, and its images can be viewed on a tablet-type computer screen.

The tanker is bound for Nome, a town of 3,500 residents that missed its final pre-winter delivery of fuel by barge when a big storm swept the region last fall.

In another winter problem, residents in the snowbound fishing town of Cordova and 57 Alaska National Guard members trying to dig out learned they needed bigger shovels with a scoop that can push a cubic foot of snow or better at a time. A Canadian firm is coming to the rescue.

"We will be shipping 72 shovels to Alaska by plane tomorrow to help," said Genevieve Gagne, product manager at the shovel's maker, Quebec-based Garant. -- AP