DAVID ELLIS reports that pilots flying in and out of America's northern-most city, Utqiagvik at the top of Alaska and beyond the Arctic Circle, are used to be being warned by air traffic controllers of "low ceilings" - aviation-speak for low cloud and poor visibility.
But they got warning late last month of a different kind of "low sealing" when controllers were forced to close the airport to landings and take-offs because a 200kg seal had clambered out of the ocean adjacent to the airport and flopped in the middle of the runway for an impromptu autumn sunbake.
Airport foreman Scott Babcock came upon the seal in a patch of sunlight on the runway that was being cleared of snow from an earlier fall.
After he radioed air traffic controllers they closed the runway, and had specialist wildlife officers come with snow-blowers to "coax" the seal onto a sled, which they then towed off to the open sea.
