You may have already seen this footage.
Looks like Sci Fi.
Very much like an event last year, this one was worse.
UDIN DHUNGA, Nepal (AP) — Massive flash floods in Nepal on Wednesday killed at least 22 people and left hundreds of tourists, workers and others missing while causing widespread damage to villages and infrastructure.
The same regions affected by Wednesday’s disaster saw flash floods similar to those in August last year, when a glacial lake in neighboring Tibet overflowed because of high temperatures in the mountain region. Nine people were killed, and critical infrastructure, including a bridge connecting Nepal and China, was damaged at the time.
Climate experts at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development say an avalanche from a glacier likely caused Wednesday’s flash flood.
The Lhende Khola River, a tributary of the Bhotekoshi River, witnessed maximum flooding Wednesday, they said.
“The Lhende Khola has flooded twice in fourteen months, this time triggered by an ice rock avalanche from a glacier on the Nepal side that blocked the river and released a sudden surge downstream,” said Saswata Sanyal, a disaster risk reduction specialist at the climate research group.
“In a warming Himalaya, early warning is the first line of adaptation,” he added.
The Himalayan region, which spans Nepal and several nearby countries, including India, is especially vulnerable to heavy rains, floods and landslides because it is warming faster than the rest of the world due to human-caused climate change. Research shows that extreme weather events, including heat waves and rains, and melting glaciers, have become more frequent in the region.
Researchers in Kathmandu found earlier this year that glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region are melting at an accelerating rate, with ice loss rates doubling since 2000 primarily due to rising global temperatures and climate change.
A preliminary analysis of satellite imagery indicates that an ice avalanche triggered the flooding, said Simon Cook, a glaciologist at the University of Dundee in Scotland who is part of a team of scientists studying the disaster. According to the team’s early assessment, a large chunk of ice broke off from a high-altitude glacier and tumbled thousands of feet below toward the Bhotekoshi River in Nepal, releasing vast amounts of energy that pulverized the ice into a significant volume of flood water.
