Jökulhlaup

Jökulhlaup.  The newest word in my vocabulary.  Wikipedia defines it as a glacial outburst flood.  As the article from the local paper explained: "Jökulhlaup is an Icelandic word, and if you want to impress your friends (or at least that easily impressed one), use the Icelandic pronunciation: Yo-kull-hloop. The ‘h’ sound is just a quick exhalation before you go on to the loop."  

Turns out, we arrived just in time to experience one.  

We took this picture of some flooded riverbank about a ten minute walk from our house.  The picture doesn't show it well but the water is such a unique, cloudy color, which Adelaide promptly explained to me is because of the glacial silt in the water (turns out she had an interesting conversation with some locals the night before about the water!)

There had been warnings about the possibility of this flood for some time.  The water levels in the basin behind the glacier have been monitored for a few years now, particularly since the last time there was a major flood from a glacial burst.  And conditions this year indicated that the water levels were even higher.  The Juneau Empire story explains it better than I can, if you're interested: Juneau Empire: Jökulhlaup erupts from glacier

See, when we were house hunting, there was a house we found on a road called Meadow Lane that we liked a lot.  But it was right on the Mendenhall River and we were concerned about flood issues.  We talked to a bunch of people who said it hardly ever floods; nothing to worry about.  Turned out we didn't get that house.  Well, now we're here and we saw these warnings and cocky us, all we could think is, phew, glad we didn't end up buying that house by the river.  Then Sherry was reading the paper on Thursday morning...she saw the lists of streets possibly impacted and started searching for Meadow Lane (#1 in photograph, caption "aren't we glad we didn't get that house by the river???").  But then she also found our street, Parkview Court (#2 caption "oh, crap").  

Graham went out to run a quick errand and on the way back they already had our neighborhood closed off to non-residents and were telling residents we were under an advisory evacuation.  We weren't worried at all about our house, but the streets we use to get to our house are close enough to the river to potentially be in the flood zone.  

So in a way it's good that all our household goods aren't here yet because packing an overnight bag was really easy.  We had just unpacked it.  Repacked it, threw it in the car, but thankfully never needed it.