Gigantic ice breakaway, then a mass of water: Nepal floods echo 2021 Chamoli disaster

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55% : Sattar had been a member of a study team that estimated that 27 million cubic metres of rock and ice -- enough to fill 10,800 Olympic-size swimming pools -- had collapsed upstream of Chamoli.
50% : The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental agency in Nepal, said the ice and rock debris had entered Lende Khola, a tributary of the Bhote Koshi river, generating a surge carrying water, sediment and large boulders downstream. Water levels rose by nine metres at some sites within 30 minutes, the ICIMOD said.
49% : Chapagain, a senior research associate in the Global Mountain Safeguard Research programme at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, said the link between seismic activity and avalanches was not yet clear.
48% : A preliminary analysis based on satellite imagery suggests that an ice-rock avalanche led to a temporary river blockage, followed by "a sudden release of impounded water and debris", the National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, said.
46% : Speaking from Bonn, Germany, Chapagain said a major part of an unnamed evolving glacier on the Nepal side of the Himalayas had collapsed, melting ice which blocked the river for some time and triggered the flood.
45% : "It was a big failure and was most likely bedrock rather than glacier ice -- possibly a very large rock avalanche that took part of the glacier with it," Shugar told The Telegraph.
44% : The rock and ice avalanche turned into a large debris flow that hurtled down the valleys towards Chamoli.
44% : A UN expert, Dipesh Chapagain, told this newspaper that an impact on India could not be ruled out as flash floods are known to affect areas 100km downstream.
41% : The trigger for the ice-rock avalanche remains unclear, said Reet Tiwari, a remote sensing specialist with the civil engineering department at IIT Ropar.
40% : The size and volume of the ice, the precise trigger for the avalanche, and the source of the floodwater remain to be determined, glaciologists who have been assessing the risk of floods from glaciers in the Himalayan region said.
39% : He said detailed analyses of satellite imagery before and after the event would help scientists estimate the volume of the ice that broke away.
35% : (AP) A gigantic mass of ice and rock broke away from a mountain and sent huge volumes of water into tributaries and valleys downstream, contributing to Wednesday's catastrophic floods in Nepal that bore similarities to the 2021 Chamoli disaster in India, scientists said.
25% : "Loosening of melting ice or even exceptional rainfall could shift the centre of gravity of a large ice mass and create an instability," Tiwari said.

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