try and predict<\/a> how severe the jökulhlaup might be that year. He said UAS and UAF help out in this aspect.<\/p>\n“It’s not just one entity,” Jacobs said. “It’s a big team effort.”<\/p>\n
The organizations communicating with each other in the case of flooding like this include NWS, the U.S. Geological Survey, USFS, the City and Borough of Juneau, Capital City Fire\/Rescue, the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities and even the University of Alaska Southeast and University of Alaska Fairbanks.<\/p>\n
CBJ Emergency Program Manager Tom Mattice said the coordination has gotten easier over the years.<\/p>\n
“It’s getting to where we’ve done it enough now where everything just kind of falls into place,” Mattice said.<\/p>\n
Preparing in advance<\/p>\n
Long-term preparation doesn’t just fall on weather forecasters. John Neary, the director of the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, said they have raised the level of the popular Nugget Falls trail specifically as a result of the jökulhlaup.<\/p>\n
In previous years, he said, people would still walk down that trail even as it flooded. He said people would go off the trail to get to higher ground so they could get out of the water but still walk along basically the same path.<\/p>\n
In order to cut down on people walking around and damaging the wildlife that grows along the trail, the Forest Service (which runs the visitor center) used gravel to raise the height of the trail, Neary said.<\/p>\n
DOT&PF Public Information Officer Aurah Landau said that DOT&PF is responsible for two bridges over the Mendenhall River — the Brotherhood Bridge and the one that carries Mendenhall Loop Road over the river — and that both of those bridges have been thoroughly inspected during the past two years.<\/p>\n
Grossman said they evacuated the Mendenhall Campground before the flooding began and found other places around town for people to set up their tents. He said they told guide companies to stay off the lake.<\/p>\n
Grossman said they also had to contact people who had reserved spots at the campground over the weekend and tell them they might have to make other plans. Still, he said there’s a real possibility that the campground will be back open by Friday night. Multiple authorities said that as well, that after the flooding peaks it usually abates rapidly.<\/p>\n
Habeger has a front-row seat, and said he has learned the river’s language over the years.<\/p>\n
“I think the river can talk to you,” Habeger said. “You can see the energy coming down the river and the waves building up. When it hits the peak, you can almost watch those waves begin to calm and then everything starts receding.”<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.<\/b><\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Weather authorities and residents are getting used to responding to glacial floods in the Mendenhall Valley. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":428,"featured_media":1237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[146,75,130,48],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-flood","tag-local-news","tag-mendenhall-glacier","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/428"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}