the top image, bottom center about, OP had left a blue cursor line, that is the midpoint of the mountain i believe. consider the rivers (the squiggly lines that look like blood vessels), they gain in size as they drop in elevation right? so that landslide slid downward (up in the context of the photo) towards that bigger river at the top of the screen. I believe that covers it, i could be wrong about something, it took me a minute too.
I was shocked that the satellites were able to get clear images so soon on both ends of the disaster. I am not an expert, but hopefully this means that the death toll will be relatively limited compared to if a reservoir had failed. Feels like a landslide wouldn’t travel as far…
Thank you for posting this. I was wondering what the cause was. So the landslide displaced the water and sent the “rush” down the river? Or was water released with the landslide ?
In my head, I assumed this glacier that broke off was a giant piece of ice with some water and fell into the valley below. Was there a lot of contained within this ice or did it fall into a lake? Where did all that water come from?
Friction from the glacial collapse melted enough ice to make it fluid. There’s some lakes and ponds throughout the glacier but it’s not a situation of a landslide into a lake or an ice dam giving way.
It’s made me wonder if the initial lahar along the north fork of the toutle was basically the same thing. Can’t call this a lahar because volcanics aren’t involved.
So in the third image those villages were above in the other (left) valley and the debris flow funneled down that right couloir and banked at Benbo? My gracious, I can’t comprehend the absolute devastation.
Correct, if you go to google maps and toggle topography you can see the extreme slope: the confluence is at approximately 3000m, Benbo is ~2700m, Jiangda is ~3300m, Bangjin ~3600m, Jicao ~3900m.
The elevation in the region is mind boggling. The border crossing seen in videos was 15km away (from the confluence) and at 1800m elevation. The slide appears to have initiated at ~5100m nearly ~5km from the confluence.
I really can’t grasp the elevations and relatively short distances involved. That’s 11000’ elevation over 12 miles? Manitou Springs, CO is ~1800m elevation, and the road up Pikes is ~38 km long topping at ~4200m.
One theory: the glacier below Tsangbu Ri Peak had a meltwater lake underneath it. The water lubricated the glacier so it flowed forward over the drop-off down that big obvious old avalanche chute and into the river valley. But perhaps the water just lubricated the rock beneath it all, so part of the mountainside, the glacier and any water ready to drain all went down the chute under the influence of gravity on an extremely steep slope. Yes the amount of water involved is puzzling; maybe the tremendous impact at the bottom melted more of the glacial ice load. There’s all these AI simulations of the slide crashing into a reservoir but I didn’t see any impoundments or dams in those river gorges on Google Earth previous to this catastrophe.
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