Alaskan Glacial Dam Outburst
By Hashim Ibrahim
Photo: WSAZ
Between August 4th to August 6th of 2023, a major glacial dam outburst from a glacial meltwater lake occurred in Alaska and sent record amounts of water into Mendenhall Lake and down Mendenhall Lake toward Juneau, Alaska. This caused significant flooding, destruction of homes & trees, and a massive amount of erosion. In the Climate.gov article about the glacial dam outburst, Rick Thoman, who is an Alaskan Climate Specialist, told Climate.gov, “Decades worth of erosion happened in one weekend,” and “The buildings that fell into the river and those that are uninhabitable now, were not right next to the river on Friday afternoon.”
On August 5th, Mendenhall Lake gauge crested at 14.97 feet which is nearly 3 feet bigger than the previous record (11.99 feet in July of 2016.) This also exceeded the initial forecast of 12.3 feet.
This is deemed to be a historical event due to how strong and big the event was, the flood was so extreme that it has only a 0.2 percent of happening each year. This highlights how disastrous glacial outbursts could be and how worse it could be in the future if nothing is done about climate change.
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