{"id":36451,"date":"2021-02-02T08:33:24","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T08:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=36451"},"modified":"2021-02-02T16:09:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T16:09:17","slug":"kapuche-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2021\/02\/02\/kapuche-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Kapuche Lake, Nepal: a video of an avalanche air blast"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Kapuche Lake, Nepal: a video of an avalanche air blast<\/h4>\n<p>Large landslides generate substantial air blasts, which can be extremely damaging.&nbsp; There are some studies of this phenomenon; a classic example was generated by the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, when <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/04\/24\/langtang-1-2\/\">Langtang was destroyed at least in part by an air blast<\/a>.&nbsp; The effects were terrible (take a look at the images in that post), but this is an under-researched area.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t normally feature snow avalanches on this blog &#8211; there are others who know this topic far better than do I, but there is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vTzRntsUVOc\">very interesting video on Youtube showing an avalanche at Kapuche Lake in Parche, Nepal<\/a>.&nbsp; This was a very large and very impressive event &#8211; the video is worth viewing simply for the scale of the avalanche.&nbsp; The avalanche itself starts at 1 minute 01 seconds:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kapuche lake 2021 (avalanche)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vTzRntsUVOc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>But the really interesting (from my perspective) element of this video is when the avalanche reaches the lake, from about 2 minutes 50 seconds.&nbsp; Stripped of the slope gradient, the avalanche appears to lose energy and indeed it is clear that the group making this video were not concerned.&nbsp; But moments later the air blast reaches them:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_36456\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-36456\" class=\" wp-image-36456\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2021\/02\/21_01-Kapuche-1.jpg\" alt=\"The air blast at Kapuche Lake\" width=\"800\" height=\"415\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2021\/02\/21_01-Kapuche-1.jpg 2549w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2021\/02\/21_01-Kapuche-1-300x156.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2021\/02\/21_01-Kapuche-1-1024x531.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2021\/02\/21_01-Kapuche-1-768x399.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2021\/02\/21_01-Kapuche-1-1536x797.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2021\/02\/21_01-Kapuche-1-2048x1063.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-36456\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The moment that the air blast arrives at Kapuche Lake in&nbsp; Nepal following an avalanche. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vTzRntsUVOc\">Still from a video uploaded to Youtube<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The initial moments of the air blast are quite dramatic and clearly unexpected.&nbsp; This is followed by a few minutes of intense wind, driven by the mass that has descended from the peak.&nbsp; The event is over in a few minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The intensity of the air blast is notable, but the volume of snow and ice that has descended is small compared with a large rock and ice avalanche.&nbsp; It&#8217;s hard to imagine the intensity of an event such as the one at <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2019\/09\/17\/landslide-air-blast\/\">Wenjia in Sichuan Province, triggered by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China<\/a>.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An air blast strikes trekkers at Kapuche Lake in Nepal following an avalanche, as caught in a video uploaded to Youtube. <!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":36456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[26881,505,469,66,72],"class_list":["post-36451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-video","tag-air-blast","tag-avalanche","tag-featured","tag-nepal","tag-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}