It’s not often that Southcentral Alaska residents wake to thunder in the middle of the night. But what forecasters are calling an unusual storm moved from the Talkeetna Mountains into the Matanuska Valley and then Anchorage and south to the Kenai Peninsula from Wednesday night into Thursday morning. At least one lightning-caused structure fire was reported.

On Sunday, a gust of wind unexpectedly hit an Alaska Airlines jet on the Dillingham runway as it was preparing to taxi from the terminal, causing it to slide on the icy tarmac.

Thunderstorms in Northern Alaska over sea ice on Monday sparked rare lightning strikes. The Washington Post reported lightning strikes occurred north of Prudhoe Bay, directly over sea ice, a rare phenomena that occurs once or twice a decade.

The East Fork Fire in Western Alaska is the state's largest at the moment, estimated at more than 150,000 acres Thursday, and it's burning in a region where, just a couple decades ago, large fires would not have been expected.