Last Saturday, Mohammed Aslam was working in his kitchen garden when he heard his fellow villagers shouting that water was coming from the nearby foothills in southern Kulgam area in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Within moments, the farmer said, mud and muck from gushing water swept through the village, damaging scores of homes.
Last Saturday, Mohammed Aslam was working in his kitchen garden when he heard his fellow villagers shouting that water was coming from the nearby foothills in southern Kulgam area in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Within moments, the farmer said, mud and muck from gushing water swept through the village, damaging scores of homes.
«It was sudden and swift,» Aslam said.
A cloudburst followed by flashfloods hit nearly a dozen villages in Kulgam, filling homes with mud and washing away some cattle.
A day before, on Friday night, another cloudburst in the neighboring arid, cold desert region of Ladakh triggered flashfloods and inundated parts of its major town, Leh. The floodwaters entered the town’s main market, damaging shops, sweeping away vehicles and leaving its streets a muddy mess.
Intense rainfall in the Himalayan regions of India’s Kashmir state and the adjacent mountainous cold desert of Ladakh last week destroyed roads and caused flooding of dozens of villages.
Cloudbursts are a common occurrence in Himalayan regions but experts are alarmed by the increase in extreme weather-related events.
Intense weather events, especially when more than 10 centimeters (3.94 inches) of rainfall occurs within a 10 square kilometers (3.86 square miles) region within an hour, are called cloudbursts. They have the potential to wreak havoc, causing intense flooding and landslides that affect thousands of people in mountainous regions.
