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In the future, don't go close to mountains during monsoon season - late May to August end; that period is specifically for Southeast Asia. For the rest of the w
by mandeepj 21d ago
In the future, don't go close to mountains during monsoon season - late May to August end; that period is specifically for Southeast Asia. For the rest of the world, you can find it out.
- bamboozled 21d agoI read this wasn't due to rain but a glacial collapse. It sounds to me like the additional advice would be that due to a warming climate, avoid being under a glacier at all costs?
- defrost 21d agoDown stream of a glacier, in the run off water shed. As I've heard tell, this was a glacial collapse into and blocking a river, which then built up a head of pressure behind it, bursting to release a hammer blow of river water and debris that travelled a great distance. Similar things can happen due to landslides into rivers; it depends on the topology of the land, here long narrow valleys carved out by heavy water flows. The warning being, don't live in a natural "drainpipe". In mountainous regions that's often not much of an option, there's a lot of vertical sides and valley bottoms.
- bamboozled 21d agoIt sounds like there may have been some opportunity for warning then? If the thing was more of a "build up" ?
- defrost 21d agoSure, if every part of rugged terrain were monitored with sufficient frequency to detect such a change. That might take some infrastructure to cover everywhere such things can happen (eg: the beds of rivers in Western Australia's Pilbara and Kimberley regions have a high flash flooding risk in the wet season.
- bamboozled 21d agoSounds like a great application for drone tech.
- defrost 21d agoIs it? What's the land area you'd like seamlessly and continuously monitored by a mobile object with moving parts ... and how is that a better solution than using static solar powered instrumentation?
- mandeepj 20d agoBetter suited for satellites
- dredmorbius 20d agoSatellites or ground-based observation. Geologists have used the latter for many decades. Monitors upslope of at-risk glaciers, solar/battery powered, and communicating by radio (or Internet / satellite links) could be part of this. See for example the extensive seismic monitoring of California's San Andreas Fault, particularly at Parkfield and through the Carrizo Plain / CA Hwy 25. <https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/parkfield/safod_pbo.php https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/parkfield/safod_pbo.php> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrizo_Plain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrizo_Plain> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_25> (Different tech, obviously, but in situ ground-based sensors which share some similarities.)
- defrost 20d agoGround based field instrumentation on specific potential threats has the advantages of being up close and always on target whereas sat observation is distant and intermittent. Multiple sat observations a day is great, obviously, but sudden collapses / changes often won't get flagged for seven or eight hours after the event.
- jltsiren 21d agoThe rivers in that area are pretty small. You would have to block them for days before there is a risk of a massive flash flood. From what I've understood, the collapsing glacier either contained enough liquid water or melted enough from the impact that it continued flowing downstream. It covered ~20 horizontal kilometers in about 7 minutes before hitting the border crossing.
- defrost 21d agoThere's a few ways this could go and very likely no video feed to be sure. It had the look of a large volume of water quickly released. Massive tonnages breaking off of a glacier is still going to be mostly ice on impact .. there's a chance debris and ice chunks made a temporary dam as the bulk of the now shattered glacier ice released water putting pressure on that weak dam - leading to collapse and release.
- dredmorbius 20d agoThe specific geological cause is not yet clear. We do know that a glacier substantially collapsed. What contributed to the amount of water in the debris flow isn't clear. Speculation, from trained geologists, is that the friction of the glacier flow itself contributed to melt. I'm speculating that recent rains or higher temperatures might have contributed to melting on the glacier (and have seen some commentary speculating about this). Speculating on my part: There might also have been accumulated water below the glacier, liberated by the ice flow, or perhaps groundwater which was evacuated along with other material. Events seem to have precipitated too quickly (roughly 7 minutes from galcial collapse to Gyirong Port inundation) for the collapse to have formed, then broken, a dam on tributary waterways upstream of the port. GLOF is a recognised threat, but this event seems to have been at best only partially explained by that, and may be an entirely different mechanism. The follow-on studies should be fascinating, in the way that horrific disasters often are.
- defrost 20d agoThat all tracks - good additional comment. > Speculation, from trained geologists Probably about on par with speculation from trained geophysicists I'd warrant.
- dredmorbius 19d agoThanks. Re "speculation, ...": my point being expertise, but based on background knowledge rather than close event-specific observations or measurements. Yes, geophysicists would be an equivalent level of expertise.
- totetsu 21d agoThis was a glacier collapse. https://www.zhihu.com/question/2075969425702741132/answer/2076161551107625157 https://www.zhihu.com/question/2075969425702741132/answer/20...