An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a sloping surface. While avalanches are sudden, the warning signs are almost always numerous before they let loose. Yet in 90 percent of avalanche incidents, the snow slides are triggered by the victim or someone in the victim's party. Avalanches kill more than 150 people worldwide each year. Most are snowmobilers, skiers, and snowboarders.

Disastrous avalanches occur when massive slabs of snow break loose from a mountainside and shatter like broken glass as they race downhill. These moving masses can reach speeds of 80 miles (130 kilometers) per hour within about five seconds. Victims caught in these events seldom escape.

Storminess, temperature, wind, slope steepness and orientation (the direction it faces), terrain, vegetation, and general snowpack conditions are all factors that influence whether and how a slope avalanches. Different combinations of these factors create low, moderate, considerable, and high avalanche hazards.

Once the avalanche stops, it settles like concrete. Bodily movement is nearly impossible. If caught in an avalanche wait and hopefor a rescue. After two hours, very few people survive.

During World War I, an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 soldiers died as a result of avalanches during the mountain campaign in the Alps at the Austrian-Italian front, many of which were caused by artillery fire A large avalanche in Montroc, France, in 1999, 300,000 cubic metres of snow slid on a 30° slope, achieving a speed of 100 km/h (60 mph). It killed 12 people in their chalets under 100,000 tons of snow, 5 meters (15 ft) deep. The mayor of Chamonix was convicted of second-degree murder for not evacuating the area, but received a suspended sentence.

Heronymivka school 11 form Moroz Bogdan