Mud Mountain was created in the 1940s to manage heavy rain and snowmelt, when glacial outbursts didn’t happen often.Įmmons gets the least amount of sun compared to Mount Rainier’s other 24 major glaciers. The dam is essential for flooding control, according to Joanna Curran, a civil hydraulics engineer within the Army Corps of Engineers. The surge of water and sediment usually stays within the park during an outburst flood, but huge flows could have impacts farther downstream at the Mud Mountain Dam, which holds back floods before they can reach nearby towns like Enumclaw. In November 2017, park technicians discovered another outburst flood when it tore out and destroyed monitoring equipment at the White River Bridge near a campground. Those floods are a normal summertime occurrence, but warmer years are increasing the likelihood for bigger ones. This happens when glacier ice melts and abruptly releases water, which then flows downstream and temporarily overflows a river. The drainage network of the glacier was just spilling out and funneled down into the canyon, almost like a little stream channel.”Īt the lower end of the glacier, Larrabee found 64 million gallons of melted snow - enough water to fill 100 Olympic-size pools.
“It was like someone had taken a snowplow and just cut through there,” he said. When setting out stakes for monitoring during the winter of 2014, Larrabee saw something unusual for the winter season: a deep channel in the snow. Like Todd, Larrabee travels on the glacier to take measurements. In low snowpack years, Larrabee’s team measured as little as 7 percent of the melt flowing into the river. For the last 20 years, nearly 16 percent of the glacier’s meltwater flowed into the river, which meanders along the northeast side of the mountain and serves as an unofficial border between King and Pierce counties. National Park Service science technician Mike Larrabee and his team from the park service study Emmons’ snowpack and how much of it has melted compared to past years to better track how the glacier feeds the White River. Todd shares her findings with the National Park Service, the only government entity closely monitoring the glacier and analyzing changes. Her fieldwork, currently funded by NASA and the University of Washington, allows for sampling that significantly adds to the information gathered through aerial mapping. This July, like every summer for the last 14 years, Todd hiked to Emmons to sample water quality and measure debris ranging from boulders of solidified lava to fragments of talus, or alpine rock. Senate, is aimed in this direction, including a goal to cut carbon emissions by about 40 percent by 2030 and invest in clean energy sources. The Inflation Recovery Act, recently passed in the U.S. More research is needed to understand what the future could bring, as well as climate policy to significantly lower greenhouse gases and slow climate change. Although Emmons grew in size each winter for decades, its surface is now melting irregularly, which raises questions about flooding and water supply as the climate warms. is an important freshwater source for the Puget Sound, feeding into the White River that runs along state Route 410. Emmons - the largest glacier in the continental U.S. During summer months, their melt flows into streams and rivers. Glaciers are essentially slow-moving rivers of ice and snow that hold water like a storage tank. “It takes a lot of heat and melt to get this thing cranking for the season.” “We’re looking down into the belly of the beast,” said Todd, professor of geological sciences at California State University, San Bernardino. She, along with a team of her geology students, then made a 1-mile trek to the end of the glacier, where an ice cave gushed water into the turbulent White River. Claire Todd walked down loose volcanic rock into a steep valley where the Emmons glacier once stretched into Mount Rainier National Park.
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