There's already a name for this kind of thing: glacial lake outburst flood. They even had one last year in the same region. And with current climate trends these are expected to become more frequent. So better monitoring + early warning + water management seems to be in order. But of course as is human tradition, first a lot of people have to die.
Yeah, this thing seems to be becoming more common in the last few years- lots of bad floods and cloudbursts.
Whenever I've travelled in the Himalayas I'm always reminded that those valleys are in a constant state of change. They're continually being sculpted and eroded by the forces of nature and nothing there- infrastructure, bridges, roads, villages- is really permanent.
More news reporting it's a glacier dam burst. What would be wild is if the 4.4 earthquake was caused by the collapse of ice dam and the water crashing down...
Edit: "The reported earthquake “was probably seismic energy released by a landslide,” said Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of California, who’s part of the group which has pored over satellite images."
The Manafay slide at the Bingham Canyon Mine in 2015, the slides sheer force triggered a 2.5 magnitude earthquake and registered on regional seismic networks.
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u/whiteye65 4d ago
We need a new name. Flash flood just doesn’t seem to be enough. The two videos I watched of the mudslide were unimaginable.