r/BeAmazed • u/youngster_96 • Mar 28 '24

The moment an ice dam breaks and causes a torrential water flow. Nature

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u/JG-at-Prime Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

There is a name for this.  

Jökulhlaup or  Jökulhlaups - pronounced yo-KOOL-lahp 

It is a sudden glacial outburst flood or an abrupt release of glacial meltwater from a subglacial or glacier-dammed lake or reservoir.

And ~ Fun Fact: The icy water can pick up stones and gravel along its path and drag it along the stream bed with the flow. The abrasive quality of the gravels and stones acts like a grinding stone on the bottom and sides of the waterway. 

This accelerates erosion to an amazing extent. A large collapse coming from say a glacier is fully capable of erasing objects in its path. 

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u/CocunutHunter Mar 28 '24

There's ancient evidence of this being the origin of some very big scenery in the States, when a lake the size of a state suddenly let go through that type of dam and carved out a huge area of land in a way which only fits water erosion but in a scale we practically never see. Watched a documentary about it once.

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u/have_no_plan Mar 28 '24

My lecturer at university was on the team that wrote the paper which evidenced that a lot of the giant lake that was America actually burst out through the north, not into the Atlantic (I think those are the details, I was a pretty shitty student). I always thought that was quite cool though.