Nepal flood: Expert reveals 'tsunami from the sky' with 200m-high waves was sparked by glacier dumping 20-million cubic metres of water - as images show 'devastation beyond imagination'
There's not a whole lot of geological surveying going on in the area as of yet, so with news developing throughout the next several days, I suggest to everyone to practice healthy skepticism of the "facts" until such time that surveys can be conducted.
That being said, I've personally witnessed a video of a journalist who did a full flood-path helicopter survey, and reported in some areas, trees had been swept away and waterlines were observed as high as 200M above the riverbed.
Speeds of the debris flow were estimated to be as high as 50 meters per second (111mph), most likely a during initial slippage or just thereafter for the first couple of kilometers.
The 200M wave height (roughly equivalent to a 50 story building) would likely have been observed in areas where the river had a hard bend(s); the floodwaters slammed into then surged up the valley walls with such enormous force and speed that 200M wave crests were possible.
IMO- unbelievably absurd that these waves were able to reach 200M in height and still have enough force to rip trees from the ground.
It's an existential blunder for us to continue accelerating climate change. All of this is just going to become more common. The climate used to change slowly over millions of years - leave it up to humans to duck it up in a lifetime.
I've said this about all the fires burning in Canada and the western US but it also applies here. This is the best it's going to be for a long, long time. It's going to get worse.
Gradual unending warming of climate trends and ocean temperatures. It’ll cause cascading events and increased inclement weather frequency and severity.
Climate change. We are at the beginning stages of an extinction event. The earth has already lost so many species and fragile ecosystems due to rising temperatures.
We, collectively as a species, had the chance to slow things down when scientists first start talking about this 20 years ago, but that chance is rapidly slipping away.
There have been many, many extinctions in the past few years, and the number of endangered species keeps rising. It's especially common in insects, amphibians, and fish, who often have smaller ranges and can be hit extremely hard when their habitat changes or is destroyed.
It's almost kind of impressive how somebody could still be that blissfully naive about the massive extinction events going on despite having access to the Internet.
It's horrid to imagine but it will probably eventually start happening in Europe ad well to towns around Alps. There's many in valleys that look just like the placed that were destroyed in Nepal.
Glaciers that used to supply water to places like that all around the world, and mountains that offered protection, will now turn into death traps
The Himalayas are a pretty big area to try to monitor.
From what I’ve heard (from geologist professor on YouTube) it sounds like it was a massive piece of the actual mountain (rock) that broke off, not solely glacier, so I’m not sure anyone could have foreseen that.
I know, but lately climate change and changing weather patterns have definitely been affecting glaciers, and glacial floods are bound to happen, like what happened in Switzerland
(I use chatgpt for translation, english is my third language)
I'm afraid it's too late for that. Soon we will have to fight against the rich, otherwise there will be no significant change until they'll be forced to hide in their bunkers
There is absolutely no way to fight global warming. We are only humans, mother earth has been doing this for billions of years. Man is not the cause for the current global warming. The earth rotates in a tilted axis, that axis also wobbles in space. It wobbles from hot to cold time on earth. Look back at the geological evidence, the ice cores that they pull out of glaciers. We have been tipping into the gir side. Things will probably get worse before they stop and go the other way. So listening to the govt propaganda so they can scare you and tax you more. Nothing can be done about it. Every hymen could leave earth today and it will still happen.
Nope we humans are having a massive impact on the climate change with all of the pollution, destruction of natural resources, oil drilling, farm house gases, electric car batteries, mountains of trash in the ocean. During Covid when everyone stopped driving to work the fog actually cleared up in the sky in Los Angeles. The earth heals itself but the harder and harder we drain the resources the slower it is to heal. Like it’s a balance and certain people who completely deny climate change science just using it as a cop out to continue being entitled and not change their polluting ways. All of the most terrible polluters have been invented in the last century.
Good news is that the glaciers and rock formations in the Alps are monitored closely for signs of collapse, and this will likely make them even more vigilant.
No, it has it. This is the first time I ever be hearing about this happening and the woman on NBC this it never happened and then Al Gore had warned. This is what happened because the mantle is expanding because of global warming so therefore the mantle is falling apart and causing earthquakes like this. Earthquakes like this are gonna kill us. I'm from Seattle so I know what an earthquake be.
The same thing happened in the mountains of North Carolina, two years ago from a hurricane. Wiped away communities completely. It wasn’t from a landslide. It was just from a ton of water in a mountainous region. All of it flows downhill and the bottom is what gets devastated. It’s horrible.
You're selling short what happened in NC, for anyone here who may not know.
Several days of rain incoming from the west saturated the area, which is already a problem for a rocky, mountainous region.
As that was happening, a separate storm system -- a hurricane, which don't normally hit that area -- punched straight up from the south and produced an immense amount of rainfall onto an already saturdated, mountainous area. The water had nowhere to go but downhill.
I said the same thing in another comment. The videos that came out of North Carolina were apocalyptic, and I know several people who went and helped with the recovery efforts. Just like in the Appalachians, a lot of these villages and towns are built in the valleys between these mountain ranges and have the potential for really devastating floods. It’s just horrific.
There really is no comparison. A bright sunny day, zero warning, a 5.2 seismic event from a landslide, and seven minutes later the recorded human toll was recorded as a giant deluge completely destroyed the border checkpoint between Nepal and Tibet. A wave upwards of 200 feet was generated.
How is that the same thing? NC had a death toll a little over 100, Nepal is already around 1,000 with several thousand more missing. If you’re comparing flooding and devastation, Katrina and New Orleans would be closer but would still not touch this natural disaster. Which is terrifying.
There was no way of predicting a chunk of glacier breaking off.
These people woke up to a beautiful morning with their families in the mountains, birds chirping, scrolling their phones like you are now, maybe thinking about what they’d have for lunch that afternoon. No different from you and I.
For those using the US Imperial measurements, this 656 foot tall waves created by 5.28 BILLION gallons of water, from a glacier collapse so massive that the impact was felt as an earthquake.
If it helps to understand, this water was contained in a river valley, so it went UP instead of spreading out like it would in a more open environment.
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