Glacier Ice Dam Breaks in Alaska; Mammals Apparently Leave for Sea

Hubbard Glacier’s ice dam ruptured with a roar Wednesday, allowing pent-up water to gush out of Russell Lake and apparently releasing marine mammals trapped by advancing ice four months ago.

“It’s making quite a roaring,” said Larry Mayo, a U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist who was camped above the ice dam when it broke early Wednesday.

“There’s a continuous din of roaring water and the boom of ice falling,” Mayo said on returning to Yakutat, a fishing town 25 miles from the glacier.

Hidden by Darkness

Mayo said he could not see the ice dam because of darkness and blowing snow, but the loud middle-of-the-night roar left no doubt what was happening.

By midday, 4 million cubic feet of water had flowed out of Russell Lake, bringing it down to 44 feet above sea level, Mayo said. Before the dam broke, Russell Lake was 83 feet above sea level.

Mayo said he expected the lake to be back to sea level by today.

Concern for Mammals

The 34-mile-long Russell Fjord was renamed Russell Lake after Hubbard Glacier, an 80-mile-long river of ice, choked off the mouth of the inlet from the Pacific Ocean waters of Yakutat Bay.

Animal lovers journeyed to the area last month to save seals and porpoises trapped while feeding in the saltwater inlet, which was being turned into a freshwater lake by glacial melt and rain.

The animals remaining now apparently have an escape route to the sea, and U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Helen Clough said: “Any that were up by the dam sure got a nice ride out.”