Worst-case glacial lake flood scenarios in a transboundary Himalayan basin 2022
18 points by totetsu 49 minutes ago | 8 comments
inasio 25 minutes ago
Reminded me of the Huascaran avalanche (1970, killed approx 30K people) [0]. I'm surprised this is not also in the thousands of casualties (perhaps it'll get there) [0]
replyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Huascar%C3%A1n_debris_ava...
madaxe_again 33 minutes ago
The debris flow that has just happened doesn’t appear to be a glacial outburst.
replyRather, the entire front face of a glacier at high elevation sheared off, likely millions of tonnes of material at least, crashed down a steep runnel, slammed into the opposing slope on the other side of the valley at the bottom, made that partially collapse, dammed the river for several minutes, and then all descended at high speed as the dam failed, with the results we see.
Some reportage is still saying there was an earthquake - there wasn’t - the landslide itself was the source of the seismic waves.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000tbwb...
Looks like a warning siren could have saved at least some lives. But apparently this was a black swan.