Yet another byproduct of climate change.
Glacial Fright
This week, Alaska's Mendenhall glacier has flooded its accompanying river in Juneau, and city officials are calling it an "unprecedented" catastrophe.
As CNN and other outlets report, more than 100 houses in the remote Arctic state's capital have been damaged as a result of what is known as a "glacial lake," which occurs when melting ice and snow begin to drain rapidly.
This effect is akin to "pulling out the plug in a full bathtub," the city of Juneau said in a press release earlier in the month. The water levels rose so high, in fact, that they overtopped the glacier itself.
As the glacier's so-called "Suicide Basin" drained into the nearby Mendenhall River, so too did the river's banks flood, resulting in the property damage and safety hazards that have continuously plagued the Alaskan capital as the world continues to warm.
Watch the dramatic rise and fall of water levels in Suicide Basin during a glacial outburst that caused flooding in Juneau, Alaska.
The USGS installs and monitors tools used by other agencies to build predictive tools to help anticipate when the next flood will occur. pic.twitter.com/tscARBSUto
— USGS (@USGS) August 9, 2024
Fill 'Er Up
While the damage this flooding has done has been "unprecedented," it's far from the first time such an event has occurred. In fact, the glacier's Suicide Basin also filled past its brim roughly a year ago, and video from that catastrophe showed a riverbank house being literally swept away with the flooding.
Though this sort of flooding has occurred for more than a decade in the Mendenhall Valley region, officials say that this year was worse. As Deputy City Manager Robert Barr told the Associated Press, the flooding's gone further than it had in previous years, and there is a "lot more water in the valley, on the streets, in people’s homes."
At its highest, the water reached nearly 16 feet high within the Mendenhall River, and as Barr noted, there was standing water as high as three or four feet on some streets during the worst of it.
Despite the wreckage this climate change-fueled flooding has caused, nobody has been seriously injured — though as CNN notes, the city's emergency shelter had roughly 40 people in it overnight at one point.
In the wake of the flooding, Alaska's Governor Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration, which seems to have properly activated emergency networks to respond to the crisis.
"I am grateful no one has been injured or killed by this morning’s outburst flood," Dunleavy said earlier in the week. "Emergency responders and managers have done an outstanding job keeping their residents safe."
More on frozen disasters: The World's Biggest Iceberg Has Started Spinning Rapidly
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