DHARALI, India — A catastrophic flood of muddy water that obliterated the Himalayan town of Dharali in Uttarakhand state this week, killing at least four people and leaving scores missing, was likely caused by a rapidly melting glacier worsened by climate change, experts said Thursday.
The disaster struck Tuesday when a torrent of water and debris surged through a narrow mountain valley, smashing into Dharali. Videos captured panicked residents fleeing as waves of freezing sludge uprooted entire buildings, engulfing others in a matter of seconds.
Government officials initially attributed the flood to an intense “cloudburst” of rain. However, experts assessing the devastation pointed to a more complex cause, citing prolonged rainfall that saturated the ground, combined with the collapse of glacial debris.
PK Joshi, a Himalayan hazards expert at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the flood likely resulted from the failure of a moraine—a pile of debris that had dammed a lake of meltwater from a retreating glacier. “Persistent rainfall or the collapse of a moraine-dammed lake likely triggered this sudden high-energy flash flood,” Joshi said. Cloud cover has obscured satellite imagery, preventing definitive confirmation of the debris source, he added.
The Himalayan glaciers, a vital water source for nearly two billion people, are melting at an unprecedented rate due to climate change, scientists warn. This accelerates the risk of unpredictable and costly disasters for vulnerable mountain communities.
Rescue operations continue in Dharali, where the full extent of the damage and missing persons remains unclear.
