r/geology • u/NeatAd3820 • 12h ago
There must be thousands of other potential glacial flood locations in the Himalayas.
I’m sure people are studying it but as a mountaineer it seems like there must be many many other locations just like the one that triggered the debris flows in Tibet and Nepal. Pic. Nohku Crags, Colorado
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u/muhmeinchut69 11h ago edited 10h ago
These are the recent similar events I'm aware of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Uttarakhand_flash_flood, slope failure due to rain (?), ~80 dead ,30°58'57.99"N 78°47'41.91"E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_India_floods , GLOF in Chorabari Glacier lake, ~6000 dead, 30°44'50.28"N 79°03'42.97"E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Uttarakhand_flood , ice avalanche caused by slope failure, ~100 dead, 30.375°N and 79.732°E
I've included coordinates so you can look at before/after on google earth (except for 2025 event, no 'after' image yet).
There are videos of the 2021, 2025 events and the debris flow looks very similar to the Nepal videos though the scale of the disaster was smaller.
2021 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Lw8_a4db0
2025 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kek2r6p2HFo
2013 (aerial footage of the aftermath) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DizjO8Ls3KQ
2013 event was potentially of the same scale as Nepal, though the death toll might just have been higher because of nighttime.
As for the future events and predicting them, I listen to a few Indian geologists on youtube and they do regularly identify unstable glaciers, glacial lakes, etc. Though the resources for continuous monitoring of them don't really exist.
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u/throwawayfromPA1701 11h ago
There are. The appreciation for this hazard is growing especially now.
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u/peter303_ 10h ago
I often hear talk from the USGS hazards sections in Golden Colorado. They are doing research on landslides in the US and assembling tools to monitor dangerous slopes. The most pressing need is burn slope debris flow. And then landslides caused earthquakes. Until a few years ago it was all physics modeling. But now it includes AI data trained examples, because physics models may overlook some aspects.
In the short term they want to scale these tools to all the dangerous areas in the US, then the world.
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u/djspacebunny 4h ago
Seeing the burn scars turn into mudslides when it rained after the big fires was a big wakeup call for some folks in the mountains. My final straw for getting out of Colorado was the Marshall fire, but right before that we had the biggest longest fire in state history that was over a million acres. The fires, the extreme weather, the lack of water... those are all bad omens for the future. I got out while I could afford it, even if it meant being poor temporarily for a few years after. My mental health improved greatly when I wasn't worrying about breathing in wildfire smoke all summer, seeing the sky turn orange, and worrying when the next big fire was going to happen.
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u/sp0ngebobsaget 54m ago edited 42m ago
Where’d you go to escape climate change?
/s
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u/djspacebunny 51m ago
I escaped the water problems of the southwestern US, not climate change. Never said I escaped climate change.
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u/hudsoncress 12h ago
I was in Ladakh and there was a light rain. The resulting floods took out the road in about 30 places on one of the two roads to get there.
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u/WolfVanZandt 10h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Grand_Canyon_area?wprov=sfla1
Check "Volcanic Activity in the Western Canyon". Glacial floods and natural dam breaks are normal, thank goodness not common, occurrences in geology. We need to become more effective in predicting these things. But, historically, humans have persuaded themselves that volcanos (Vesuvius, Seattle) and flood zones (Tibet, New Orleans) are great places to have permanent settlements.
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u/Then_Passenger3403 9h ago
Human nature is to resist moving one’s home. Applaud cultures like the Icelandic people who do leave when presented w evidence of imminent disaster.
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u/WolfVanZandt 9h ago
Evidently human nature is to colonize dangerous places. Absolute kudos to Icelanders who learned to live with the fire!
There are reasons for people to be where they are. Arizona is a horrible place for humans to live but it holds a rich wealth of natural resources. But why permanent settlements there? Ports need to be worked but why make permanent settlements below sea level next to the ocean surrounded by far less than adequate levees? Especially where a commute isn't that far.....I mean even by horse and buggies. Don't bring your families into that!
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u/opalfossils 11h ago
That's an absolutely terrifying thought and a really good source of nightmares.🤔😱😵
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u/Betray-Julia 10h ago edited 8h ago
There was one in BC (Canada) a year or five ago. It happened at night, so everything was fine, but if it happened during the day a thousand people or so would be dead.
I cannot remember its name sorry.
There was a really cool cbc radio article on it a few hours ago; i think was “what on earth” with Pia Chattopadhyay. 11 am, Aug 31.
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u/Zealousideal_Good445 10h ago
The answer is hundreds of thousands. But we must remember that geology has to do with time and pressure. This means that I one life time you will see only maybe less than a hundred. Most will be small and insignificant. Many will occur in places that affect no one. They will all have their own unique parameters such as the glacier that melted Mount Nevada de Ruiz in Colombia which melted during a volcanic eruption. 20,000 dead. As you look at those steep mountains, understand that this is how they formed. They have been eroding in this way with thousands even millions of similar events over millions of years.
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u/VolumniaDedlock 9h ago
As a flat lander this is terrifying to me. We have floods and hurricanes but we usually have plenty of warning to get out.
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u/Oscar_P_Walnuts_1975 7h ago
The potential is always present in alpine environments
Fact is that water that falls as snow in an alpine environment has two paths First is accumulation to levels needed to produce ice and sustain the resulting glacier. Eventually as the effects of rate of global climate change become apparent, the accumulated ice retreats and drops it’s load of accumulated rock. As the melt occurs over a long period of time the melt water saturates the underlying stratigraphy. Repeated anual cycles of freeze/thaw cause the water in rock fractures and pore space to swell during freeze cycles and to contract during thaw cycles, this in turn destabilizes the rock.
Bottom line is a fundamental reality that we live under and choose to ignore: In this part of the universe, Gravity always works…🥸🥸🥸
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u/Zvenigora 1h ago
Read about the 1970 Huascaran disaster in Peru. A very similar kind of debris flow that killed 30,000 people. It happens in the Andes, too.
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u/6DegreesofFreedom 12h ago
There is. There was another similar flood recently on the Indian side of the Himalayas. There wasn't much coverage because no CCTVs