Warm weather triggers a landslide in Alaska

Warm weather triggers a landslide in Alaska. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory shows the aftermath of a landslide on Yudi Peak, a mountain near Anchorage, Alaska.

The month of May brought a blast of early summer temperatures to the region.

According to University of Sheffield landslide watcher Dave Petley, a type of landslide that occurs along multiple planes, known as a “wedge failure,” sent rocky debris sliding down the mountain at some point in early May. 

Warm weather triggers a landslide in Alaska. The image was captured on May 13, 2020 by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the next three largest states Texas, California, and Montana combined, and the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and the most sparsely populated state, but by far the continent’s most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with an estimated population of 738,432 as of 2015—more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland.Approximately half of Alaska’s residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. The state capital of Juneau is the second-largest city in the United States by area, comprising more territory than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware.

—

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA