Fat bears break the internet, Katmai extends first-round voting – Alaska's News Source

Fat bears break the internet, Katmai extends first-round voting  Alaska’s News Source

A record-breaking rush of voters overwhelmed the site on opening day; voting restarts Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific. ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The bears got too big for the internet to handle. Katmai National Park and Preserve announced Wednesday that first-round voting in the 12th annual Fat Bear Week has been extended after a crush of traffic appeared to overwhelm voting servers on opening day. “THE BEARS HAVE BROKEN THE INTERNET,” the park wrote in a Facebook post. “Literally.” Explore.org, which hosts the online tournament, confirmed the site buckled under record demand. “We had our biggest Day 1 turnout of all time and experienced some system overload,” the organization said in its own Facebook post, adding that any votes already cast Wednesday still count.

Day 1 voting will continue Wednesday, with polls open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Alaska time at fatbearweek.org The meltdown came on the opening day of a bracket organizers had already billed as one of the toughest in the contest’s history, with heavyweight champions Bear 32 (“Chunk”) and Bear 164 squaring off in a first-round matchup that normally wouldn’t happen until much later in the tournament. Last year’s contest drew more than 1.7 million votes from upward of 100 countries — and if Wednesday’s crash is any indication, this year’s fans showed