A cloudburst is a sudden spell of localised, heavy rainfall where the amount of rainfall over a particular area exceeds 100 millimetres in an hour
The 2013 flash floods caused by a cloudburst in Uttarakhand has been one of the worst natural disasters the country has recorded since the 2004 tsunami. On July 22, 2023, over a dozen houses and shops in Leh, Ladakh, suffered partial damage after cloudburst-triggered flashfloods.
Shimla, Srinagar, Kinnaur and Kullu districts also experienced cloudbursts this month. This has become a common event. Each year, the number of cloudbursts recorded are rising.
In 2021, Himachal Pradesh recorded around 30 cloudburst events and Uttarakhand 50. In 2022, flash floods that followed a cloudburst near the Amarnath cave in Jammu and Kashmir left 17 dead.
Climate change has been making these extreme weather events more frequent and intense, according to meteorologists. But, why do cloudbursts happen and why this region?
A cloudburst is a sudden spell of localised, heavy rainfall where the amount of rainfall over a particular area exceeds 100 millimetres in an hour. They often result in flash floods and have become increasingly common from May-September when the southwest monsoon season prevails in much of the country.
The phenomenon that is responsible for this is ‘orographic lift’, a process by which clouds that are already to rain are pushed up by warm air currents. As they reach higher elevations, the water droplets within the clouds become bigger and new ones are formed.
These dense clouds eventually burst, unable to hold the large volume of moisture. This results in torrential downpours in the region right below and leads to overflowing of water bodies in a very short duration of time.
The phenomenon is more common in mountainous areas because they offer the terrain for moisture-laden air to rise swiftly along the mountain slopes.
A doppler-radar system is ideal for predicting the calamity and after the 2013 calamity, demands were made to equip monitoring stations in cloudburst-prone areas with this system.
In Ladakh, the heavy rains caused damage to the Leh-Nubra Road at Khardong and Khalsar villages. Standing agricultural crops were also damaged due to these floods in some areas.
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