177 million cubic feet/5 million cubic meter landslide expected
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The N face of Klein Nesthorn in Switzerland is expected to fully release a landslide any minute now that could release up to 5 million m3/~177 million ft3* into a valley - the mountain has already had displacements of up to 17 m and the mountain itself had already shrunk by 8 m !!! People below have already been evacuated.
This gif shows the very beginning of the displacement today, in which a portion of the summit and ridge started collapsing; the ensuring scree fall below can be seen in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch... (<---- updated link). Incredible!
The landslide, like many others throughout the Alps, Himalayas, and Andes, is linked to shrinking glaciers and intense snowmelt due to rising temperatures from climate change (a.k.a. "The Crumbleocene").
If it falls as predicted, this would be just an incredibly large landslide, about the size of the one the that dammed the Yellow River in China about 4000 years ago if you'd like a sense of scale.
Update: finally found a web cam! As of ~1:00 MST (~9 PM there, so it will be dark soon) there's a bunch of dust plumes from the main slide as it fails incrementally and some smaller debris flows around it: https://www.bergfex.fr/lauchern...
live ticker and source: https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/schweiz...
(That live tracker includes the most Swiss statement, "In response to a journalist's question . . . a 'large convoy of cows' from Blatten had recently arrived" in a town outside the evacuation zone.)
*about 6.6 million cubic yards if you prefer
This gif shows the very beginning of the displacement today, in which a portion of the summit and ridge started collapsing; the ensuring scree fall below can be seen in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch... (<---- updated link). Incredible!
The landslide, like many others throughout the Alps, Himalayas, and Andes, is linked to shrinking glaciers and intense snowmelt due to rising temperatures from climate change (a.k.a. "The Crumbleocene").
If it falls as predicted, this would be just an incredibly large landslide, about the size of the one the that dammed the Yellow River in China about 4000 years ago if you'd like a sense of scale.
Update: finally found a web cam! As of ~1:00 MST (~9 PM there, so it will be dark soon) there's a bunch of dust plumes from the main slide as it fails incrementally and some smaller debris flows around it: https://www.bergfex.fr/lauchern...
live ticker and source: https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/schweiz...
(That live tracker includes the most Swiss statement, "In response to a journalist's question . . . a 'large convoy of cows' from Blatten had recently arrived" in a town outside the evacuation zone.)
*about 6.6 million cubic yards if you prefer
::insert gif of little kid laughing then crying::
https://tenor.com/view...
volumetric bovine morphologies vary greatly
[To get this number I had to convert 5,000,000 cubic meters into its equivalent cubic feet, then divide by 176 (the average volume of an elephant) and multiply by 102 (the number of Intel P4300M servers which could be contained in 176 cubic feet according to Intel https://scontent-lga3-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v... ).]