05:55 PM PDT on Thursday, May 18, 2006

By GLENN FARLEY / KING 5 News

SEATTLE – Every winter, landslides hit Western Washington. Now, scientists have completed work on new landslide maps that pinpoint high-risk areas.

KING

Water, dirt and gravity in the right combination can spell disaster – or, at minimum, a muddy mess.

Last winter, we thought the rains would never stop, and every winter, we get what many people call mudslides.

Some years are worse than others. In 1997, a huge rain-induced landslide broke in Woodway sweeping part of a freight train into Puget Sound, and around that same time, another slide wiped out homes along Seattle's Perkins Lane.

USGS landslide geologist Ed Harp is one of the key people studying the risks when mud starts moving.

"It can travel with speeds of 35 to 50 miles per hour. You can't outrun that," he said.

It's not always obvious where the slides happen. A number of them did occur just north of Carkeek Park. But vegetation in this part of the country grows so quickly, much of the evidence is quickly covered up.

One of the maps the U.S. Geological Survey is issuing uses a type of radar that looks through all that vegetation. Combined with increasingly detailed knowledge of the area's geology, scientists have a better idea of just what areas are most vulnerable.