[Rockhounds] Storms can cause landslides, but not in a way you would expect

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

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.

https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/22/3125/2022/