In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Q: Jonathan Dove was patrolling Mt. Shasta on a clear, warm afternoon when a group of backpackers asked him if Mud Creek Canyon on the Northern California peak always flowed so heavily. 
  
 The U.S. Forest Service climbing ranger scrambled up a ridge to investigate. He peered into the canyon below and found a small creek flowing like a brown river. There was a loud roar, and then a wave of boulders, mud and water 4 feet high. 
  
 "It sounded like a freight train barreling down the canyon," he said, and at times "like a thunder rumble. In my 10 years as a ranger on Mt. Shasta, I've never witnessed anything of this magnitude." 
  
 Government scientists say exceptionally hot, dry conditions and a lack of insulating snowpack primed Mt. Shasta for the massive mudslide that rumbled down over the weekend after a pulse of water burst out from under an alpine glacier. 
  
 That a severe drought could cause flooding is the latest expression of a three-year dry spell that is afflicting California with increased wildfires, crop losses, water shortages and spikes in air pollution. 
  
 What caused the Mt. Shasta debris flow? 
  
 The U.S. Forest Service is still investigating exactly what caused the thick slurry of mud, boulders and debris to pour through Shasta-Trinity National Forest Saturday afternoon, damaging roads below. Their working theory is that water from melting ice pooled up underneath a glacier along the mountain's southeastern side, then flushed out all at once into Mud Creek about 2:30 p.m. 
  
 When water from melting ice becomes trapped beneath a glacier, "it's almost like a cork in a bottle popping out suddenly," said Steve Bachmann, a hydrologist with U.S. Forest Service. 
  
 He has made several helicopter trips to search for clues to the mudslide's origin but has seen nothing unusual on the glacier's surface. "The release must have been very rapid based on the conditions we saw below," Bachmann said. 
  
 Boles fire Justin Sullivan, Getty Images A house destroyed by the Boles fire in Weed, Calif., is backdropped by Mt. Shasta, where a thick slurry of mud, boulders and debris poured through Shasta-Trinity National Forest on Saturday afternoon. A house destroyed by the Boles fire in Weed, Calif., is backdropped by Mt. Shasta, where a thick slurry of mud, boulders and debris poured through Shasta-Trinity National Forest on Saturday afternoon. (Justin Sullivan, Getty Images) 
  
 While debris flows can occur any time, he said, the heat and lack of precipitation have raised the odds considerably. With the drought, snow that usually acts to insulate Mt. Shasta's glaciers has been heavily depleted. 
  
 "In a year like this, all the snow is gone and it's just the glacialized ice exposed to the sun day after day," Bachmann said. 
  
 Such dry-weather events, known as "outburst floods," are a common occurrence on Mt. Shasta that happen whenever rapid melting causes water to pool behind glacier ice, said Jeffrey Mount, a retired UC Davis geologist who is now a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit think tank. 
  
 Glaciers respond slowly to temperature and precipitation changes, he said, so it takes a prolonged period of warming, dryness and low snowfall for such strains to build up. 
  
 "If you were going to get a rapid melting of a glacier, this is the year," Mount said. "To the uninitiated, it would not make much sense to have a mud slurry coming down when it isn't really raining, but it's consistent with a pulse of very rapid melting associated with this unusually dry and warm year. That's when glaciers are really feeling the heat, rapidly melting and causing these mud flows." 
  
 The mudslide that began Saturday gathered vast amounts of sediment and debris as it moved swiftly downhill. It slid through the night before starting to recede Sunday morning, the Forest Service said. Because the slide ran through a remote area of Siskiyou County, there were no injuries or major damage reported. 
  
 U.S. Forest Service scientists say they believe the mudslide was triggered by water released from the Konwakiton Glacier, the fifth-largest of seven glaciers that sit high up on Mt. Shasta, a 14,163-foot dormant volcano that towers over California's northernmost counties. 
  
 California has about 100 glaciers, most of them high in the Sierra Nevada. But their retreat has been so dramatic in just the last 20 years that the number is falling, experts said. 
  
 Glaciers on Shasta have unleashed similar dry-weather deluges before. 
  
 In 1924, a mudflow triggered by glacial melt covered an area five miles long, a mile wide and 10 feet deep, threatening the nearby town of McCloud and generating front-page headlines in San Francisco for weeks. Outburst floods occurred in 1926 and 1931, relatively dry years. 
  
 Bachmann said a debris flow also occurred on Mt. Shasta during California's severe drought of 1976-77. 
  
 The last major mudslide on Mt. Shasta happened in 1997 when a storm laden with tropical moisture dumped heavy rain on its northern side. 
  
 Dove, the climbing ranger who reported the debris flow, has seen two previous incidents over the summer in which glacial meltwater triggered unusual flooding on Mt. Shasta. 
  
 In July, he said, he got out of his truck to find that a creek, swollen with water from another glacier, had jumped its normal channel and sent silt across a logging road in the middle of the forest where he knew there was no creek before. 
  
 "All it really takes is a really dry, hot period of weather to destabilize conditions on the glacier," Bachmann said. 
  
 But a short snap of cold weather could have the opposite effect, he said, adding: "It could shut this whole process down, and we'd be OK again going into this next winter." 
  
 tony.barboza@latimes.com 
  
 Twitter: @tonybarboza 
  
 Times staff writer Veronica Rocha contributed to this report. ||||| MT. SHASTA, California - A glacier on Mt. Shasta broke off and sent a mudflow cascading down the mountain Saturday, prompting National Weather Service officials to issue a flash-flood watch Sunday as debris clogged two roads in McCloud. 
  
 Though small compared to a notorious mudflow that inundated McCloud in 1924, U.S. Forest Service Hydrologist Steve Bachmann said the latest one is the worst he’s seen in his 20 years in this area. 
  
 “This is the biggest thing I’ve ever seen (here),” he said Sunday afternoon, standing on a shuttered chunk of Pilgrim Creek Road so badly covered in dried mud that the pavement wasn’t visible. 
  
 It all started when part of the Konwakiton Glacier gave way on the southeastern flank of Mt. Shasta, about midway up the 14,179-foot peak. Shasta-Trinity National Forest wilderness rangers believe that the mudslide may be related to the drought, which has left Mt. Shasta’s glaciers sweltering in the sun. 
  
 “The ice has been exposed for just a very long amount of time,” Bachmann said. 
  
 Shasta-Trinity National Forest spokeswoman Andrea Capps said no homes were in imminent danger of being swept up in the mudflow, and there were no reported injuries or homes damaged from the flooding. Accordingly, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office was not issuing evacuation notices for nearby residents, though a spokeswoman didn’t rule it out entirely, depending on how weather affects the situation. 
  
 Bachmann also said area residents don’t need to worry about the mudflow hurting their homes. But, he said, there’s always a risk in living close to a glacier, and the one that caused so much chaos Saturday was actually relatively tiny. 
  
 “The bigger they are, the more interesting things could get,” he said. 
  
 But Dan Selby, who lives about a half-mile from the debris area, said that he’s not worried and that danger can happen wherever you live. 
  
 “You just have to accept whatever’s going to be; it’s just that simple,” he said Sunday. 
  
 Selby and his wife, Mary, reflected on lore from the 1924 mudflow, which — coincidentally — was the subject of last month’s play put on by the Heritage Junction Museum, where they’re volunteers. 
  
 “It just buried everything,” Mary Selby said of the 1924 mudslide. 
  
 Forest Service crews used heavy machinery to scoop tons of mud and logs out of the roadway on Pilgrim Creek Sunday afternoon, but the overwhelming mud and debris could take a week or so to fully clean before roads are opened again, officials said. 
  
 “Frankly, we’re struggling with it,” Bachmann said. 
  
 Crews also flew over the most recent mudslide in a helicopter Saturday afternoon to make an assessment and map the damage area. Bachmann estimated that it was at least several miles long, though not very wide. 
  
 Pilgrim Creek Road and Winding Way (Forest Road 31) are closed. Forest Service officials say motorists shouldn’t try to drive over the slide area because even small amounts of mud and debris can overpower a vehicle. 
  
 The weather service’s Medford, Oregon, office issued the mudflow watch, and previously had issued a warning, which is more serious. 
  
 Meteorologist Sven Nelaimischkies warned that storms forecast for Mt. Shasta could worsen the debris flow. 
  
 “Then things would definitely get more complicated,” he said. 
  
 Capps issued a similar warning, saying the weather is the wild card. 
  
 “It could start flowing in certain areas again,” she said. 
  
 Officials also anticipate that the debris flow will affect Lake McCloud and the lower McCloud River, particularly for fishers, who will likely find it hard to see their targets in the sediment-filled waters.. 
  
 “It doesn’t take much to blow out the lower McCloud River,” Bachmann said. 
  
 More information is available at the Mt. Shasta Ranger Station at 530-926-4511, which is open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. 
  
 Tweets by @ashulman_RS |||||
A: 
The US Forest Service thinks it knows what caused the boulder-filled mudslide that surged down Northern California's Mt. Shasta on Saturday: the Golden State’s extreme drought conditions. According to the LA Times, scientists think water gushed down from the Konwakiton Glacier, causing a mudslide that picked up increasing amounts of sediment and rocks before coming to a halt in Shasta-Trinity National Forest early Sunday morning. One resident who lives at the base of Mt. Shasta tells the Sacramento Bee, "I'd describe it as looking like chocolate pudding. It was just thick mud and boulders." This type of phenomenon, known as an outburst flood, can happen during hot, dry weather, when snow that usually buffers a glacier from the sun melts away. That leaves the glacier vulnerable to the sun's heat, a retired UC Davis geologist tells the Times. Water pools up under or on top of the glacier until it spews out all at once, "almost like a cork in a bottle popping out suddenly," explains a Forest Service hydrologist. This type of glacial-melt flooding has occurred on Mt. Shasta before: A 1924 mudslide smothered a swath of land 5 miles long, a mile wide, and 10 feet deep. No injuries or severe damage were reported in this weekend's event—but how do locals who live close to the seven glaciers on Mt. Shasta feel about future possible outbursts? "You just have to accept whatever's going to be; it's just that simple," one resident tells the Record Searchlight. (The region's drought might end up being one for the ages.)