Hundreds of people in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley are living on the front line of a climate change disaster they didn’t see coming. This is Outburst, the story of how glacial outburst flooding has escalated faster than human imagination – and public policies to protect people.
The KTOO newsroom takes you from the floodwaters to the glacier’s edge to uncover why the annual floods happen, how they got out of control and what can be done to keep Juneau safe.
Suicide Basin is a slurry of water, icebergs and silver silt between jagged peaks, and it’s the source of Juneau’s annual glacial outburst flood. The Mendenhall Glacier revealed the basin as its retreat reshapes parts of Juneau’s topography.
Researchers say that understanding the basin and others like it is key to a better knowledge of future glacial outburst floods. The second episode of Outburst takes us from the past, when early Mendenhall Valley residents were among the first record keepers of area floods, to the present to hear how scientists are figuring out how big the danger could get.
KTOO’s Alix Soliman is our guide from the basin’s edge to the Mendenhall River floodplains to understand what we know — and which questions are left unanswered.
