A May Landslide in Alaska

Typography

Warm spring weather may have helped trigger a landslide on Yudi Peak.

After a cold winter, a shift in weather patterns has unleashed a blast of early summer heat across Alaska. On May 9, 2020, temperatures hit 69°F (21°C) in Anchorage, just one degree shy of the record.

For a state with plenty of mountains, glaciers, and permafrost, spring and summer heat can bring more than just greening leaves and pollen in the air. It can also thaw soils in ways that encourage landslides.

That was likely what happened on Yudi Peak, a mountain near Anchorage, in May 2020. In the early days of the month, a “wedge failure”—a type of landslide that occurs along multiple planes—sent rocky debris sliding down the snow-topped mountain, according to University of Sheffield landslide watcher Dave Petley.

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Image via NASA Earth Observatory