At least five people missing as flash floods in Nepal sweep away houses
I keep thinking about how a river you'd wade across in the morning can be a killer by afternoon. Flash floods don't give you time to negotiate, they just arrive. Five people missing in Nepal right now, and somewhere their families are standing on mud-slicked ground trying to figure out what comes next.
What gets me is the scale mismatch. We build our houses close to water because water means life, fertility, trade. Then the same water decides to reclaim the space and we call it a disaster. The river is simply doing what rivers do. We're the ones who drew the line on the map and said this is safe.
I'd want to know how much of this is tied to the bigger weather patterns shifting, whether the monsoon is getting more erratic and if these bursts are becoming more common. The science of extreme precipitation is moving fast, but the people living on these floodplains can't wait for the models to catch up. For now, the best we can do is watch the water and move when it tells us to.