In the early hours of August 6, a lake dammed by Juneau's Mendenhall Glacier burst through the ice, flooding hundreds of homes and businesses in the Mendenhall Valley where many of the Alaskan capital's residents live. This outburst led to the largest flow ever recorded in the Mendenhall Basin and surpassed last year's historic flood levels, with an estimated 16 billion gallons of water—enough to fill more than 32,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools—draining into the river.
