Laguna Palcacocha
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| Laguna Palcacocha | |
|---|---|
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| Location | Ancash Region |
| Coordinates | |
| Basin countries | Peru |
| Surface elevation | 4,566 m |
Laguna Palcacocha (Quechua "palka"=valley "qucha"=lake) is a glacier lake in the Andes-Cordillera of South America in northwestern Peru.
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[edit] Location
Laguna Palcococha is located at in the Ancash Region in Cordillera Blanca at an elevation of 4,566 m, just below Palcaraju (6,274 m) and Pucaranca (6,156 m) summits. The lake is one of several lakes supplying the town of Huaraz with water, 23 km to the southwest.
[edit] Flood Disaster 1941
On the early morning of 13 December 1941 a huge chunk of the adjacent glacier fell into Lake Palcacocha, causing the breaking of the moraine walls that limit the lake downhill. The wave hurtled down the Cojup Valley, destroying another lake on its way (Laguna Jiracocha) and carrying blocks of ice, large rock boulders and liquid mud towards the Río Santa valley. Within 15 minutes the mudslide reached Huarez, with 400 m³ of debris burying parts of the town and killing approximately 6-7,000 inhabitants.
[edit] Disaster Warning 2003
In April 2003, NASA scientists discovered a fissure in the glacier above Lago Palcacocha on Terra satellite images of November 2001. Their warnings reached Peru just two weeks after UGRH (Unidad de Glaciologia y Recursos Hidricos) staff had done some field mapping of Laguna Palcacocha, where a moraine rupture had caused a minor flood from the lake on 19 March 2003 which the safety constructions from the 1940s had captured.
According to research done by scientists of the Innsbruck university in Austria, the ensuing panic among the inhabitants and economic damage to Huarez' tourism industry could have been prevented, as from their findings the NASA warnings were a misinterpretation of satellite data.
As the glaciers in this part of the Cordillera Blanca as well as elsewhere have been declining and thinning up because of global climatic changes, there is no actual danger for Huarez in the foreseeable future.
