The mechanics of the Nepali flash flood

pm2222•about 5 hours ago

https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-nepal-tibet-glacie...

CCTV footage is there. Horrific scene. When you see it coming at you it’s already too late.

glimshe•about 4 hours ago

I haven't yet been able to properly internalize the horror of this scene. Maybe because we're exposed to so many images from disaster and action movies/videogames, I got somewhat desensitized to the "graphics", so to speak. It's like my brain is denial.

At the same time, I know this is real and a tragedy in an unimaginable scale. Every "little walking figure" is a full human being with dreams, fears and a rich life story.

I'm afraid that at one point it will just hit me super hard.

debo_•about 3 hours ago

About 18 years ago, some guy at work was laughing at a video of someone being blown to pieces by an explosive device. People kept walking by his desk and laughing, I suppose because it looked so cartoonish that it felt more like looney tunes than real life.

As an experiment, I showed the same video to my 85-year old grandmother, and she cried out in horror and prayed for the people in the video for a solid hour afterwards.

Fricken•about 2 hours ago

I go around with the general awareness that about 200k people die every day. I know that disasters and tragedies happen around the world on a regular basis. I know that cameras are nearly ubiquitous even in the developing world, so there is a good chance that any sensational event will be recorded and posted on the internet. Armed with these priors it's not a huge surprise or shock to me. It is still impressive, however.

bamboozled•about 2 hours ago

What scares me about climate change is how frequent these “little figures” are getting wrecked.

In Japan we have had these sudden flood events this year, people just die as their cars are washed away.

Never in my life have I considered checking the weather forecast and flood watch warnings almost every time I get in the car but I do this year.

We have really fucked the climate and this is just the beginning.

verdverm•about 3 hours ago

Tragedy happens every day, this is likely one of those freak events we cannot do anything about. Millions of people die from hunger and malnutrician every year. Perhaps we could focus our energies on that were it not for the media (us by proxy) that prefers the edgier stuff, since we've desensitized ourselves and seek that fix with something new

decasia•about 4 hours ago

The CCTV footage was one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen on the internet lately.

It makes me think a bit of the Johnstown flood from 1889:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood#/media/File:Th...

tintor•about 3 hours ago

Is Switzerland exposed to similar risk, given the amount of glaciers?

AlotOfReading•31 minutes ago

Probably not. Most alpine valleys were carved by glaciers and have a characteristic U-shaped profile. When you get a landslide into a glacial valley, it hits the relatively flat floor and breaks itself apart. The valleys themselves are usually wide enough that they don't dam either. The alps also have significantly less relief than the Himalayas.

The valley where the floods occurred in Nepal has a V-shape, and the peaks around it have much more relief. It's much easier for a large landslide to fill the bottom, creating a dam that can burst, or just continue down the valley without wasting all its energy on a broad flat plain at the bottom. The upper valley immediately below the cliff face that toppled was also a glacial U-shaped valley though, so this speculation might need adjustment as more work is done.

It's worth emphasizing just how much less monitored and dangerous Nepal's mountains are though. The (greater) Himalayas are unlike any other mountain ranges I've ever seen.

bamboozled•about 2 hours ago

Yes, but apparently they monitor the glaciers stability / Temperature closely and evacuate required

llsf•19 minutes ago

And it is at a smaller scale in the Alpes than in Himalayas. Still devastating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YisdT5AJobk

France is actively draining some of those glacier lakes to prevent them to build up over time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-xmvYe11U

blondie9x•about 2 hours ago

Really helpful on navigating what happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZvUQ7aoehw

croisillon•about 4 hours ago

another good article, without paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/27/nepal-tibet-fl...

shreya1999•about 3 hours ago

Need of the hour is AI for climate change.

The mechanics of the Nepali flash flood

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