NASA Warns Glacier in Peru Could Break Apart

NASA has warned that a glacier in Peru’s Andes mountains could break apart and cause an avalanche in a populated valley.

The space administration said this week that its Terra satellite had detected an “ominous crack” in the Cupi glacier, calling it a “potential glacial disaster-in-the-making” near the tourist town of Huaraz. But Benjamin Morales, head of the Andean Geological Institute and considered Peru’s leading expert on glaciers, said it is normal for Andean glaciers to have “thousands of cracks” and that the report was unnecessarily alarmist.