Slashdot Mirror
Studying Avalanches A Little Too Closely
Makarand writes "ABC News has
an interesting
article about a Professor in
Montana State University who is trying to
perfect avalanche prediction techniques. He studies
avalanches using the 'direct method,' i.e. he
sets off an avalanche and puts himself right
ahead of it so that he gets buried alive, a routine he has been doing for 20 years now.
His goal is to be able to use data about the climate, mountain topography and snow microstructure in a model to forecast if we
are prone to avalanche conditions."
Well, if what the article said was accurate, you're not missing much as far as climate-related causes of avalanches. Basically, he said that if avalanches causing fatalities happen, they will most likely be caused by humans disturbing the snow cover, not because of natural conditions. He also said something about being able to predict almost all avalanches, check the article for details.
As for the purpose of his study, it seems to be focused more on with how an avalanche moves once it's triggered than on the actual cause. However, unless I missed something, he didn't make it clear how that data would be of use to most people. Maybe it could be used to construct climbing gear better suited to protecting someone caught in an avalanche, who knows. At any rate, I hope this answers your question.
The description of his activities are very misleading in the slashdot article. The ABC article is very much worth the read.
if you actually read the abc story you'll find that he's not, as implied by the slashdot post, merely standing in the path of these avalanches wearing nothing but ski goggles and goretex. he's in a wooden bunker that's bolted to the bedrock and packed with instrumentation. this gives him not only live data from the basal layer of the avalanche, but an up-close experience that helps him interpret that data in a more insightful way. of course, you could probably accomplish the same by giving thermometers to a bunch of graduate students and telling them, "stand over there. no, not in the trees, out there on the slope. wait right there while i push this button."