Videos · September 18, 2026 · 35 seconds
Nepal Built Its Flood Warnings Around Glacial Lakes. This Disaster Came Down the Mountain Instead.
A glacier collapse on August 26th killed more than 1,400 people in Nepal. The country's warning system was built to watch glacial lakes, and this flood had no lake, wiped out the upstream sensors, and began across a border where data sharing had been agreed but never switched on.
Read the full articleby Adam Canissario
Transcript
WHY NEPAL GOT NO WARNING
[THE COLLAPSE] A glacier fell, not a lake.
- On August 26th, a slab of Nepal's Langtang Lirung glacier broke off.
- It fell about 1,200 meters and became a flood of water, mud and rock.
- No warning sounded. Over 1,300 people have died, and thousands are missing.
[THE BLIND SPOT] The system watched the lakes.
- Nepal's warnings watched glacial lakes, not glaciers.
- The upstream sensors were destroyed before they could send an alert.
- Much of the watershed lies in Tibet. Nepal had no data feed from there.
Read the full article at noozify.com. Images: NASA (PD); Hrishav398 (CC BY-SA 4.0). Music: an original score for Noozify.