The December 2020 rock-ice avalanche at Punta s. Matteo (Ortles-Cevedale
group, Italian Alps)
Riccardo Scotti
Glaciology Research Group
Università degli studi di Milano
Università degli studi di Milano
The December 2020 rock-ice avalanche at Punta s. Matteo (Ortles-Cevedale
group, Italian Alps)
Do you have any thoughts on a specific trigger for this event happening on that day? I imagine it is not usually possible to pin a specific failure event on a weather event but was there anything anomalous going on in the synoptic weather conditions when the failure occurred?
I am interested to see what happens this summer when there may be more water around.
Also is there now a debris deposit on the upper Forni? Will it be buried, or is there very little or no accumulation zone left?
Hello Lindsey,
We have exluded any particular weather conditions connections. Whave analyzed the air temperature fluctuations at the closests WS and from the end of september the air temperature remained almost constantly below zero at the scar location.
Most of the debris arrived to the flat area of the western Forni glacier at around 3000m. In the past iw was an accumulation zone but in recent times it’s mostly in the ablation area so we’ll probably see some debris cover there around even if it’ll be probably not very thick or extended