Can a change in the weather trigger a landslide? Sometimes, yes, according to research. From a report: Most landslides are set in motion by an earthquake or torrential rain, but some have no obvious trigger. In 2009, scientists were stunned to discover that the stop-start Slumgullion landslide in the Rocky Mountains — which has been inching down the hillside for 700 years — is triggered by changes in atmospheric pressure. So is Slumgullion a rare exception? To find out, scientists fed weather and landslide data from Taiwan — whose typhoons and steep hills create a perfect natural landslide laboratory — into a landslide model. Their results, which are published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, demonstrate that when the eye of a storm passes over a hillside, the change in atmospheric pressure can provide the final push, but its ability to do this depends upon the weather over the preceding months.

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Source: Slashdot – Storms Can Cause Landslides Days Later, Scientists Find