Dimensions Of Mountain Disaster

The catastrophic Bhotekoshi flash flood of August 26 proves that the threat of disasters in the Himalayas amid global warming and climate change is not a fiction but a harsh reality. Moreover, the calamity is coming in a form never seen or even imagined before. Observations and analysis of satellite images have led scientists to conclude that it was not a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). Instead, the flood was triggered by a sudden collapse of a glacial slope below the Langtang Lirung Himal, composed of ice, soil, and rocks. The weather at the time of the disaster was neither rainy nor cloudy. But it happened during the hot, if not hottest, time of the year when ice and snow have the tendency to melt.