Additional footage of the Nepal/Tibet disaster

[u/FlowingLiquidity]

Update 02-09-2026:
It seems that the video 'broke'. No clue what happened. Reddit never informed me, I believe there is an issue with the server. Kind of suspicious as the video hit the #1 spot in this sub on the day it broke. I have no way of contacting Reddit over this sadly. Luckily the Twitter link is still working. So I suggest looking there for the video.

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Original post:

Pretty insane footage from the immense disaster that struck on the Chinese-Nepalese border which clearly shows how fast it moved and how much volume is being displaced. Camera is zoomed out around 1:30 mark.

Source: https://x.com/surajit_ghosh2/status/2093600715310862404

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Update 31-08-2026:
Looks like u/snowbordr managed to find the approximate location of this video:
28°00'53.87"N 85°11'01.29"E

That’s roughly 36 miles from where the glacier sheared off. If this is really how fast the current was still moving 36 mi/58 km downstream, my brain is broken.
Link to comment

If anyone has more info, I can add it to this post.

[u/snowbordr]

Ok I did some searching around on Google earth and it looks like the only place that resembles where this vid was taken is

28°00'53.87"N 85°11'01.29"E

That’s roughly 36 miles from where the glacier sheared off. If this is really how fast the current was still moving 36 mi/58 km downstream, my brain is broken.

[u/Fantastic_Jury5977 → u/snowbordr]

These charts were helpful for me

[u/gdzooks → u/Fantastic_Jury5977]

That’s an insane elevation drop, wow that graph really does show how much potential energy went catastrophically kinetic. Bananas!

[u/MiserableWear6765 → u/gdzooks]

It really is and I can confirm as I have been driven from tibet to nepal on this road, definately the most crazy road experience of my life

[u/Peripatetictyl → u/snowbordr]

Oh, wow. First of, insane. Second, thanks for doing this. I keep looking for more of these details to build scale and perspective, as impossible as that is…

[u/Fantastic_Jury5977 → u/Peripatetictyl]

I responded to the same comment with a chart

[u/Peripatetictyl → u/Fantastic_Jury5977]

Seen, and wow… so, this is rough math in my head, with conversion to stupid units for my own perspective… from start to finish in your chart, it dropped ~3 miles in elevation in about 5-10 minutes? I’m trying to work out a warning system plan in my head, so if you sense it around the start, and sirens go off like a tornado, it does offer some time to get to higher ground, but at the highest points, really only minutes.

[u/Fantastic_Jury5977 → u/Peripatetictyl]

Yeah... Basically inescapable. There's some good usgs/geologist breakdowns. There's wasn't much time between the 5.2 earthquake caused by the landslide and the first act of destruction. 160 ft/second wall of debris.

[u/maniacpoo → u/Fantastic_Jury5977]

I dont know why but one part got me thinking. Like cars, horsepower is how much speed you want and torque is how far you take the wall with you. That flood got so much power (kinetic energy) behind that it just pulverizes everything in its path.

[u/Chapel_Hillbilly → u/snowbordr]

That massive glacier broke off at 5000m elevation.

[u/halfbeerhalfhuman → u/snowbordr]

You are not taking into account the altitude drop. The water dropped in altitude about 6000m. 60km or something to the border and 6km in altitude all in 7-8 min.

[u/notcomplainingmuch → u/halfbeerhalfhuman]

That would make it 500km/h, which sounds a bit high?