Residents in Alaska’s capital cleared out waterlogged homes Wednesday after a lake dammed by the picturesque Mendenhall Glacier gave way, causing the worst flooding in the city yet from what has become a yearly phenomenon.
At least 100 homes and some businesses were damaged by rapidly rising floodwaters that crested early Tuesday, according to initial estimates. In some areas, cars floated in chest-high water as people scrambled to evacuate. The waters receded by Wednesday, and the river level was falling.
The flooding happened because a smaller glacier nearby had retreated — a casualty of the warming climate — and left a basin that fills with rainwater and snowmelt each summer. When the water creates enough pressure, as happened this week, it forces its way under or around the ice dam created by the Mendenhall Glacier, enters Mendenhall Lake and eventually makes its way to the Mendenhall River.
Since 2011, the phenomenon has at times flooded streets or homes near Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River, and last year floodwaters devoured large chunks of the riverbank, inundated homes and sent at least one residence crashing into the raging river.
But this week’s flooding was unprecedented 추천 and left residents shaken as they tried to dry out furniture, important papers and other belongings in the sun Wednesday and filled trash containers with sodden insulation and carpeting.
While the basin was created by glacial retreat, climate change plays almost no role in the year-to-year variations in the volume of the flooding in Juneau, said Eran Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alaska Southeast who has studied the Mendenhall Glacier for years.
The glacial flooding, however, is a reminder of the global risk from bursting snow-and-ice dams — a phenomenon called a jökuhlaup, which is little known in the U.S. but could threaten about 15 million people around the world.
The city of about 30,000 people in southeast Alaska is reachable only by plane or boat and is already struggling with a housing shortage that could limit the temporary accommodations available for flood victims. Juneau also has limited rental car agencies for those whose vehicles were swamped.