ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Jessie Holmes, a former reality television star, won the longest-ever Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Friday, celebrating with fist pumps to a cheering crowd and posing for photos with his two floral wreath-adorned head teammates, Hercules and Polar.
Holmes was first to the finish line in the Gold Rush town of Nome, on the Bering Sea coast. The race began March 3 in Fairbanks after a lack of snow forced changes to the route and starting point.
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A former reality TV star and his team won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Friday. (AP Graphic)
Jessie Holmes celebrates after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Friday morning, March 14, 2025 in Nome. (Loren Holme/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
Jessie Holmes mushes down Front Street on his way to winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Friday morning, March 14, 2025 in Nome. (Loren Holme/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
Jessie Holmes hugs his lead dogs Polar, left, and Hercules after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Friday morning, March 14, 2025 in Nome. (Loren Holme/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
FILE - Matt Hall (4), of Two Rivers, Alaska, mushes down Fourth Street during the Ceremonial Start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska., Saturday, March 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman, File)
FILE - Jessie Holmes (15), of Alabama, mushes down Fourth Street during the Ceremonial Start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska., Saturday, March 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman, File)
That made the normally 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) race a staggering 1,128 miles (1,815 kilometers) across the Alaska wilderness. Holmes finished in 10 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes and 41 seconds.
“It’s hard to put into words, but it’s a magical feeling," Holmes said shortly after crossing the finish line. “It’s not about this moment now. It’s about all those moments along the trail.”
He will take home $57,200 for winning the race, along with awards including $4,500 worth of gold nuggets and 25 pounds of fresh salmon for finishing first in earlier stages.
Holmes, who was competing for the eighth time, previously finished in the top 10 five times, including third last year and in 2022. In his first Iditarod, in 2018, his seventh-place finish earned him Rookie of the Year honors.
Matt Hall, who was born in Eagle, a tiny community on the Yukon River in eastern Alaska and began mushing at age 2, crossed the finish line three hours after Holmes to take second place. His parents owned an expedition company, and he grew up with sled dogs and guiding weeklong trips for clients.
With ice-encrusted eyelashes, Hall laughed as he described this year's grueling longer distance as “too long.”
Paige Drobny finished third, becoming the first woman on the podium since Jessie Royer placed third in 2020. It was Drobny's 10th attempt in the race.
Drobny lives in Cantwell, Alaska, with her husband and fellow long-distance musher Cody Strathe where they raise sled dogs at Squid Acres Kennel. The name comes from her master’s thesis on squid in the Bering Sea.
Holmes, who was born and raised in Alabama, left at age 18 and worked as a carpenter in Montana for three years. He arrived in Alaska in 2004 and found adventure running dogs on a remote location of the Yukon River.
“It’s been a truly amazing 10 days and I soaked in every part of it — the lows, the highs, the in-betweens. ... I’m really proud of these dogs and I love them. And they did it. They deserve all the credit," Holmes said.
He gave a special salute to his two lead canines, Hercules, his half-sprint dog, and Polar, saying, “He's the brains behind the operation.”
Holmes now lives in Nenana, where he works as a carpenter and lives a subsistence lifestyle. From 2015 through 2023, he was a cast member of “Life Below Zero,” a National Geographic program that documents the struggles of Alaskans living in remote parts of the state.
Besides the lack of snow north of the Alaska Range that forced the change of starting point to Fairbanks, race organizers also had to make changes to the ceremonial start in Anchorage.
With snow trucked in to cover streets in the state’s largest city, the usual parade route there was shortened from 11 miles to under 2 miles (from about 18 kilometers to under 3.2 kilometers), and the number of dogs was reduced.
It was the fourth time in this century that the race was forced north from the Anchorage area because of a lack of snow.
Only 33 mushers started in Fairbanks, tied with 2023 for the smallest field ever. The drop in participants has raised concerns about the viability of the race, which has had to contend with inflation, climate change and pressure from animal rights groups.
One dog died in this year’s Iditarod: a pregnant female on the team of musher Daniel Klein, who under race rules scratched due to the death.
Nearly a third of the mushers quit early, including eight who scratched and two who were withdrawn for not being competitive.
This year’s Iditarod run paid tribute to another famous mushing event, the 1925 Serum Run, in which sled dog teams saved Nome from a deadly diphtheria outbreak.
Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska.
This story has been corrected to show the race distance this year was 1,128 miles (1,815 kilometers), not 1,129 (1,817 kilometers).
A former reality TV star and his team won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Friday. (AP Graphic)
Jessie Holmes celebrates after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Friday morning, March 14, 2025 in Nome. (Loren Holme/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
Jessie Holmes mushes down Front Street on his way to winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Friday morning, March 14, 2025 in Nome. (Loren Holme/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
Jessie Holmes hugs his lead dogs Polar, left, and Hercules after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Friday morning, March 14, 2025 in Nome. (Loren Holme/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
FILE - Matt Hall (4), of Two Rivers, Alaska, mushes down Fourth Street during the Ceremonial Start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska., Saturday, March 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman, File)
FILE - Jessie Holmes (15), of Alabama, mushes down Fourth Street during the Ceremonial Start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska., Saturday, March 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman, File)
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The threat of tornadoes moved east into the Mississippi Valley and Deep South on Saturday, a day after a massive storm system moving across the country unleashed winds that damaged buildings, whipped up dust storms that caused deadly crashes and fanned more than 100 wildfires in several central states.
Multiple tornadoes were reported in Missouri on Friday, just some of the extreme weather that was forecast to affect an area home to more than 100 million people. Winds gusting up to 80 mph (130 kph) were predicted from the Canadian border to Texas, threatening blizzard conditions in colder northern areas and wildfire risk in warmer, drier areas to the south.
The National Weather Service issued multiple tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings early Saturday morning for areas in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana and Texas.
Three people were killed Friday in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo County in the Texas Panhandle, according to Sgt. Cindy Barkley of the state’s department of public safety. One pileup involved an estimated 38 cars.
“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” Barkley said, calling the near-zero visibility a nightmare. “We couldn’t tell that they were all together until the dust kind of settled.”
Evacuations were ordered in some Oklahoma communities as more than 130 fires were reported across the state. The State Patrol said winds were so strong that they toppled several tractor-trailers.
“This is terrible out here,” said Charles Daniel, a truck driver hauling a 48-foot (14.6-meter) trailer along Interstate 40 in western Oklahoma. “There’s a lot of sand and dirt in the air. I’m not pushing it over 55 mph. I’m scared it will blow over if I do.”
Forecasters said the severe storm threat would continue into the weekend with a high chance of tornadoes and damaging winds Saturday in Mississippi and Alabama. Heavy rain could bring flash flooding to some parts of the East Coast on Sunday.
Experts say it's not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.
“What’s unique about this one is its large size and intensity,” said Bill Bunting of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. “And so what that is doing is producing really substantial impacts over a very large area.”
The weather service said at least five tornadoes were reported in Missouri on Friday, including one in the Saint Louis area. Several buildings were damaged in the storm, including a strip mall in Rolla, Missouri, where a tornado was reported Friday afternoon.
The Storm Prediction Center said fast-moving storms could spawn twisters and hail as large as baseballs, but the greatest threat would come from straight-line winds near or exceeding hurricane force, with gusts of 100 mph (160 kph) possible.
“Potentially violent” tornadoes were expected Saturday in parts of the central Gulf Coast and Deep South into the Tennessee Valley, according to the National Weather Service.
The Storm Prediction Center said parts of Mississippi including Jackson and Hattiesburg and areas of Alabama including Birmingham and Tuscaloosa would be at a high risk. Severe storms and tornadoes were also possible across eastern Louisiana, western Georgia, central Tennessee and the western Florida Panhandle.
Wildfires in the Southern Plains threatened to spread rapidly amid warm, dry weather and strong winds, and evacuations were ordered Friday for some communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.
A blaze in Roberts County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo, quickly blew up from less than a square mile (about 2 square kilometers) to an estimated 32.8 square miles (85 square kilometers), the Texas A&M University Forest Service said on X. Crews stopped its advance by Friday evening.
About 60 miles (90 kilometers) to the south, another fire grew to about 3.9 square miles (10 square kilometers) before its advance was halted in the afternoon.
The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management activated its emergency operations center due to several fast-moving fires that prompted evacuations of the town of Leedey in the western part of the state and in a rural area east of Norman.
Firefighters had been prepositioned in certain areas, which helps authorities jump on blazes early, said Andy James, Oklahoma Forestry Services fire management chief. Firefighting aircraft were also deployed in some parts of Oklahoma and Texas but were generally unable to fly due to low visibility from smoke and dust, he added.
Friday evening, the National Weather Service said a “complex of extremely dangerous fires” was located northeast of Oklahoma City, near Stillwater, and urged some people in the city of about 50,000 to evacuate. Officials issued mandatory evacuation orders via social media that included homes, hotels and a Walmart.
Officials urged people in some areas of central Missouri’s Camden County to evacuate due to wildfires, and the State Highway Patrol warned via social media that they were nearing homes and businesses.
Roughly 120 miles (190 kilometers) of Interstate 70 in western Kansas were temporarily shut down due to blowing dust and limited visibility.
High winds also knocked out power to more than 216,000 homes and businesses in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, according the website poweroutage.us.
The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of far western Minnesota and far eastern South Dakota starting early Saturday. Snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches (7.6 to 15.2 centimeters) were expected, with up to a foot (30 centimeters) possible.
Winds gusting to 60 mph (97 kph) were expected to cause whiteout conditions.
Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia, and Golden from Seattle. Associated Press journalists from across the U.S. contributed.
A wildfire spreads through trees Friday, March 14, 2025, south of Langston, Okla. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
The Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on the campus of the University of Oklahoma is seen covered by dusk and smoke as wildfires spread across Oklahoma on Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
Families evacuated from wildfires near Norman, Okla. talk and watch the latest news information on tv at CrossPoint Church in Norman on Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
A wildfire burns through a field Friday, March 14, 2025, south of Langston, Okla. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
A wildfire burns a home down on Friday, March 14, 2025, south of Langston, Okla. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
Fire crews battle a wildfire Friday, March 14, 2025, south of Langston, Okla. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
This photo provided by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol shows a tractor-trailer overturned on highway US 183 just south of Hobart, Oklahoma on Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Oklahoma Highway Patrol via AP)
A wildfire burns at night on Friday, March 14, 2025, south of Langston, Okla. (AP Photo/Alonzo Adams)
Crews work to remove a large pine tree from Glencannon Drive after severe weather hit in Pico Rivera, Calif., Thursday, March 13, 2025. (David Crane/The Orange County Register via AP)
Mark Nelson, of Wis., waits with his tractor-trailer after it overturned during high winds and a possible tornado on Interstate 44 westbound at Villa Ridge, Mo., Friday, March 14, 2025. (Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)
