the.com/avalanche
a mountain shrugging off its winter coat at the speed of a freight train.
means A sudden, massive slide of snow, ice, or rock rushing down a mountainside.
from From French avalanche, rooted in the Alpine dialect word lavanche for a snowslide — its spelling nudged toward the French avaler, 'to descend' (literally 'to go down to the valley,' from à val). The earlier form lavanche is of uncertain origin, possibly from a pre-Latin Alpine word; the swap of letters that gave us 'aval-' looks like the mountain dwellers' own ear for things going downhill fast. English borrowed it in the 1700s.
- top speed
- can hit 80 mph in seconds
- trigger weight
- often just one skier's body
- survival clock
- odds plunge after 15 buried minutes
- sound first
- often heard as a deep whumpf
- snow myth
- loud noises rarely cause them
for instance
colorado avalanche — nhl team founded in 1979, plays in denver