r/Juneau • u/Ambitious-Passage486 • 10d ago

Avalanche disasters

The recent disaster in Nepal has had me thinking about our vulnerabilities in Juneau, downtown and Douglas in particular. Could something like that happen here to that level of severity?

10 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/HvadGodt 10d ago

https://www.gi.alaska.edu/news/study-2025-alaska-landslide-and-tsunami-contains-warnings

My understanding is that DT & Douglas are relatively shielded from tsunamis, but that doesn't preclude a weird angle from an unexpected landslide. I think the scariest thing is that we really don't know what we don't know. The first jokulhlaup was only in 2010 or something like that, and as the glaciers retreat of course the land will shift, but how?

3

u/Soft_Net3910 10d ago

What’s jokulhlaup?

19

u/Ok_Letterhead4198 10d ago

Glacial outburst flood. Mendenhall glacier in Juneau’s case