Avalanche, Ooty

Avalanche is an important tourism destination in the Nilgiris District, 25kms away from Ooty town. This area is surrounded by a rolling landscape with blooming flowers like magnolias, orchids and rhododendrons. Over 2700 species of flowering plants, 160 species of fern and fern allies, countless types of flowerless plants, mosses, fungi, algae, land lichens are found in the sholas of the Nilgiris.

Sholas are patches of stunted evergreen tropical and subtropical moist broad leaf forest found in valleys amid rolling grassland in the higher montane regions,The shola and grassland together form the shola-grassland complex or shola-grassland mosaic. In terms of this broader definition, shola forests are found all along the upper reaches of the Western Ghats where the elevation goes beyond 1500 m msl.

By its Grammatic meaning an avalanche (also called a snowslide or snowslip) is a sudden, drastic flow of snow down a slope, occurring when either natural triggers, such as loading from new snow or rain, or artificial triggers. Avalanches are most common during winter or spring but glacier movements may cause ice avalanches during summer. In mountainous terrain avalanches are among the most serious objective hazards to life and property, with their destructive capability resulting from their potential to carry an enormous mass of snow rapidly over large distances.