Sea Ice extent February/March

The big story for Climate Watch this week is sea ice extent in the Bering Sea. While not at the high levels seen in spring 1976 and 2012 (there's less ice this winter in Russian waters), in the past four weeks ice expanded rapidly on the Alaska side of Bering Sea and now is close to the highest levels in the past 55 years.
On February 20 ice extent was well below normal, but then the sustained change north winds and very low temperatures has pushed the ice far to the south, with the total ice extent in the Bering Sea increasing by over 60 percent.
The ice has reached both St. Paul and St. George in the Pribilof Islands, but even more unusual is that ice extends southwest along the north side of the Alaska Peninsula past Nelson Lagoon.
The last time there was so much ice in this part of the southeast Bering Sea was the spring of 2012.
Now you might think this is good news for Arctic sea ice overall, but alas, that's not the case. Mid-March Arctic-wide sea ice extent is running at about the third lowest on record, and that’s because the Bering Sea is the only region where ice extent is even a little bit above normal.
To our west, in the Sea of Okhotsk (west of Kamchatka), ice extent is the lowest of record, and it's also well below normal of the Atlantic Ocean side of the Arctic. The ice in the Bering Sea south of St. Matthew Island is mostly less than one foot thick and is already running into sea water that is well above freezing. So the ice will rapidly melt when the weather pattern changes and south winds return and wave action and milder air take their toll.