Watch a landslide happen at 50 cm per hour

This is a photo of a landslide. But it's not a landslide that happened, it's a landslide in progress. Very, very slow progress. At Snake River Canyon, Wyoming, this flow of dirt is moving down a hillside and across a highway at a rate of 50 centimeters per hour, says Dave Petley on the American Geophysical Union's Landslide blog.

The Snake River Canyon landslide is slow enough that Wyoming Department of Transportation workers can climb around on it, as it's moving. In fact, they took a video of themselves doing this. When the film is sped up, you can see the landslide in action—and see that it is actually two separate landslides moving alongside each other! You also get a delightful sequence of fast-moving DOT workers that's just waiting to be paired with Yackety Sax.

Video Link

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: Environment • Science

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

cservant

0.000310685596 mi/hr
cservant

Opps, rest of my comment got cut.

The video is sped up, which makes it hard to say how long he stood there. But I could see what you mean. Look at 21 second in of this video. The orange dressed worker stands there and behind the worker is a green tree. The worker then starts walking away 27 seconds later in the video. Suppose the worker stood there for an hour, if it’s 50 m/hr, the worker would be off the screen.
- emmdeeaych
  
  I’d say the area in the foreground, where he stands and touches his toes, moves laterally by about 45 to 50 feet over the course of the entire video. However long it was, he had time to stand around, look at his watch, and then also walk entirely out of the frame. I’d call that a good 1/2 mile distance.
  
  So, the walking time is about 15 minutes. My best guess.
  
  Extrapolated: The standing around, looking at his watch, both in the foreground and in the middle, i estimate as about another 15 to 20 minutes, and the time before he even come on the screen is then about another 20+ minutes. All estimates, but yes, I am a scientist.
  
  So it seems to be about an hour compressed, and for at least the nearground part of the flow that means it’s something like 50ish feet per hour-ish. Let’s call it 0.01 mph between friends.
  
  At least according to the back of this envelope. And about three times that is 50 meters per hour. Same order of magnitude. Seems pretty reasonable. That’s 0.03 mph.
  
  50cm/hr seems too low by orders of magnitude. Thoughts? Anyone read the article?
Anonymous

That’s about 12 meters in on day (roughly 12 yards). That is actually a lot of ground.
voiceinthedistance

DIRT GLACIER!
efergus3

“fast-moving DOT workers” Only on Fantasy Island.
Bucky

“Fast-moving” DOT workers needs to cue the Benny Hill music.
irksome

Someone needs to be patting a little bald guy on the head and chasing buxom wenches.
optuser

Looks like the Earth is taking a dump.
caipirina

What video device these days films in SQUARE? Or is that the next version / beta for Hipstacam in testing?
Anonymous

Someone needs to make a Benny Hill reference because it’s not like there was one in the post or the first three comments or anything.
mappo

I wonder what “work” they are performing by crawling all over the landslide as it occurs. Seems more like play to me.
timquinn

Uh, pixels, hello?
- Anonymous
  
  dude change your resolution to 240p
ScottTFrazer

Yakety Sax? Really? Because I thought this was more obvious:

http://is.gd/q5AyOm
Anonymous

that is cool but the picture is not in progress. The water in the bottom is not moving.
tamgoddess

People are always so disparaging of construction workers and people who work out in public of all kinds. What if they saw you at your desk, perusing boingboing? Nobody can work all the time they are on the job. Rest and bonding with your coworkers is also important. And you don’t know, it was too fast to tell if they were also doing something productive. Isn’t work hard enough without trashing everyone?
- holtt
  
  Why on watching this, do I think of this story? http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/window.asp
- Spezz
  
  Well, at my job if I stop working for more than maybe 60 seconds, one of my superiors will call me on it and either engage me for a status update or just plain tell me to get back to work. I have people under me that I am expected to do the same to.
  
  I do realize my job sucks, and I am actively pursuing a better job and an education simultaneously. As far as i know there are many people in a similar position. We reserve the right to tease those who are “on the job” but not working.
Anonymous

this contains a bug…try and debug-i couldn’t
OmiWan

It’s way faster that 50 cm/hr. You can see DOT worker is displaced for more that a meter, I doubt he stood there for two hours or more.

Maybe, it’s 50 m/hr?
- Anonymous
  
  That would match the youtube commenter who quoted metre-a-minute.
- jonnypage
  
  I was noticing that too, it’s a LOT more than 50cm/h, at least in that video.
Halloween Jack

Hmmm…

http://bennyhillifier.com/?id=u99FnHi5-xA&feature=player_embedded
- Anonymous
  
  That’s genius.
Anonymous

Not a good idea to be climbing around on it. They’ve no idea when it could transition from creep to catastrophic failure.
Ipo

Fifty feet?

I read the headline as 50 mph and was about to call bullshit seeing the picture. There wasn’t enough dust for that.