Officials said that the recently installed rivers were records of floods and prevented widespread damage to the capital of Alaska on Wednesday, after it released a snow dam in the nearby iceberg, a significant increase in rainwater and the melting of ice.
The water was collected in several streets and in some of the Juneau squares after the Mendenhall Credged River earlier in the day, and the high water is expected to last for hours. But many residents in the flooding area were evacuated before the peak level of water levels, and there were no similar damage reports to the past two, when about 300 homes were immersed.
“If our society is truly protecting our society,” Katie Caester, director of Juno City, told a news conference.
On Tuesday morning, the authorities confirmed that the water began escaping from the snow dam, with the expected floods until Wednesday. Some of Junau residents in the flood area had already been evacuated as those responsible for their warnings increased on Tuesday, saying: “Do not wait, evacuate tonight.”
National Weather Office (NWS) in Juno He said in X Publishing Late on Tuesday, local hydrology scientists have amended the expenses of the exhausted floods, expecting that the river will continue with more than 16 feet Wednesday morning.
Nicole Verrene, with NWS, said during a briefing on Tuesday that the flood warning was issued after “a lot of analysis”, but the calculations are complicated by rain, causing a significant rise in the lake and the river and confirmed that at all without my glyce had occurred.
“This will be a new record that depends on all the information we have,” said Verren, According to the Juno Empire.
City officials responded to real estate owners’ concerns this year by working with government, federal and tribal entities to install a temporary dam along a length of about 2.5 miles (4 km) from the river bank in an attempt to prevent large -scale floods. Emergency Director Ryan Oshunisi said that the 10,000 Hesco barriers of reinforced sand bags aim to protect more than 460 drugs.
Some water leaked into squares through drains that were installed under the barriers. The officials said that the trees floating in the river were hit and striking the barriers. But the fortified wall is largely held.
It fills the ice Ice and a large valley north of Juneau, creating a snow dam for the Meltwateer Lake that fills the suicide basin. Since 2011, the floods caused by the depression have been flowing into Lake Mendinhol and rushing to the river towards Juno every year.
But the judgment is done Climate.
The National Society for Oceanic and Air Country (NOAA) said in a statement that Alaska was heating twice as soon as possible from the United States during the past few decades.
Over the past century, the average annual temperature in Alaska increased 3.1f and the general trend continues to increase, According to the data One of the national centers in NOAA for environmental information.
Scientists have attributed to retreat, melting, and mitigating icebergs over the past century to a warming climate for the Earth. The ice rivers in Alaska are among The fastest iceberg on earth It was a sharp decline since the late 1980s, according to L. Climate Science Center in Alaska.
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On a standard level of water that Juno threatened, Rick Thuman, climate specialist in Alaska at the Alaska Climate Evaluation and Policy, tell Climate.gov, NOAA mentioned: “Without climate change, there is no reason to believe that this will happen on the iceberdhol ice, then in the lake, and Downloader.”
In August 2023, Fararah sent record quantities of water to Lake Mendinhol and below the Vendinhol River towards Juno, which led to the outbreak of areas that have not previously experienced floods, NWS office said in Juno At that time, causing great erosion.
Mindenhall Glacier is about 12 miles from Junau and is considered a famous tourist attraction. Junau is 800 miles (1300 km) from Anchorage, where Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on Friday to discuss the war in Ukraine.
The floods of iceberg have become an annual anxiety for nearly 15 years, and in recent years they have swept the houses and submerged hundreds of homes.
It is blamed for a smaller ice retreat near the ice shell – a victim of the heating climate – and left a basin filled with rain water and melting snow every spring and summer.
When the water creates enough pressure, it imposes its way under the ice dam or around it that was created by blue ice.
Mindenhall was originally named Sitaantaagu (“The Glacier behind the City”) or Aak’wtaaksit (“The Glacier Beyond the Little Lake”) by the Indians Tlingit, but it later called it Auke (Auk) Glacier, for the Auk Kwaan band from Tlingit , By natural john muir. His name was changed in 1892 to Thomas Corin Mennahal, who helped define the borders between Canada and Alaska. The remains of the small ice age that lasted until the middle of the eighteenth century are now declining at about 100-150 feet (30-45 meters) annually.
The Associated Press contributed to reporting