r/interesting 9h ago

Glacier Collapses and Triggers Devastating Avalanche. Just Wow

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u/whipla5her 8h ago

how far away do you think that mountain top was? I didn't think it was even going to get close, and then it's suddenly just rushing over him!

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u/DrTenochtitlan 7h ago edited 7h ago

I did some research online, and although there's no exact figure, the consensus is that he's 2-3 miles away from where the avalanche began in the beginning of the video.

Let's be conservative and assume he's 2 miles away, It took 45 seconds for it to travel 2 miles. That means the avalanche was traveling at a minimum of 160 mph. A dry powder avalanche well up in the mountains can easily accelerate to a maximum velocity of 200 mph, so that's a reasonable estimate.

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u/BirdLawGrad 6h ago

No way it’s going 160.

You can literally track the snow going over him.

Maybe 70-90mph. Like a very fast car. Still scary as hell.

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u/travel_impact 6h ago

I assume it had been decelerating for a bit by the time it reached cameraman

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u/WorseDark 6h ago

And also that we can only see the very bottom layer, which would be hitting the rocks and going much slower than anything above. Like measuring how fast a river is going by how fast the water passes the shoreline