Analysis of Nepal Glacier Disaster

Well, let's analyze the disaster in Nepal, what may have led up to it, and how it unfolded almost minute by minute. First, where is Nepal? It's in Asia, sits right here. China's to the north, India is to the south.

And of course, it is home to the tallest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas, we're of course, all familiar with Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world. And you notice there is a lot of white on here as well, right?

But just like many places in the world, the glaciers in Nepal, and there are more than 3,000 of them, are very susceptible to melt. That's happening everywhere on the planet, and certainly it's happening here. A study over a decade's period of time show this Yala glacier, where the collapse occurred, has lost about 33 feet of water equivalent

in that decade, so about three stories worth of water. And this summer, Nepal is experiencing one of its warmest summers on record. But let's d- break down some details specifically of

this glacier. This is it right here, okay? And the area of collapse was about a mile wide, okay? So in essence from about, say, here to here, that is about a mile across. Elevation here is about

16,700 feet, okay? It's way up there. All right? The other thing to keep in mind is this time, 10:52 and 10 seconds, the exact moment that the US Geological

Survey registered the collapse. But also something else to consider, you see all of this, all this white? All that is fresh snow. This image is from January of this year. It's the coldest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, fresh snow. High albedo, we would call this, or high reflectivity.

So as the sun is beating down on this snowpack, a lot of it's being reflected back out into space. And so you don't get a ton of snow melt when you have a high reflectivity surface like this, something bright white. However, in the summertime, it's a completely different story.

Temperatures are warmest, again, Nepal experiencing one of its warmest summers on record, so a lot of this fresh snow ends up melting, revealing a very dingy, gray, rock-filled

glacier underneath. And so it absorbs a lot more heat, it accelerates the melt. There are more details to point out about this specific glacier. Notice all of these striations in here, and so it's almost like an

accordion. What causes that? A variety of things. The slope itself could be some small tremors that cause this. Thaw, freeze, all these things can contribute to a very susceptible glacier. That's exactly what this is, and down it came. Again, 16,000 feet up, it all came

crashing down rapidly. You see this area right in here, this channel right here? That's from glacial retreat, sediment left over. But notice, almost like, in essence, a half pipe on a ski slope. So it's a perfect channel for all this to

come screaming down the mountainside and be focused at a very specific location. So from the top of the glacier down to the river here, that's about a 7,000-foot drop over the course of roughly 3.4 miles. Now, because it's coming down with such force,

all of that ice in that glacier basically pulverizes and liquefies in the snap of a finger. So now you've got massive amounts of water that are gonna flow down the gorge here. And so again, keep in mind, the, the Himalayas, you

got these big slopes here. And so it's really constricted, so the water is rising, right? And according to helicopter surveys, generally speaking, 300 feet was the peak of the debris line.

Could you imagine a wall of water and debris, 'cause it's picking up things all along the way here, 300 feet tall? Absolutely terrifying, right? From there, it works its way downstream. We've all seen the video of the checkpoint, the

China-Nepal border where they've got a border crossing there. That's about 13.4 miles from the peak of the Yala glacier and the collapse, okay? It's about a 10,500-foot drop over that period, okay? What that tells us is a significant slope.

For example, the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans, 1,700 miles, it only drops 750 feet. This drops more than 10,000 feet in roughly

13 miles. There's the building. We saw what happened, but here's one thing to keep in mind. The exact moment of first contact with the building, 'cause we saw it on the surveillance camera and the clock,

10:59:50. That's exactly seven minutes and 40 seconds after the collapse was registered by the USGS. So over that distance and time, the average speed of the flood was

105 miles per hour. A wall of water 300 feet tall going 105 miles per hour described by survivors as a tsunami. Coming down, though, with such force in this direction, it smashes against this bank. Part of it actually goes upstream for a

mile and a half, and then mos- much of it then continues downstream as well. From this point, we go 32 miles downstream. We find ourselves in Trishuli Bazaar.

It is a village here where the water is now a little bit lower. It's not a 300-foot tall tsunami anymore. It's significantly lower. Some of it has dissipated. The speed has slowed some because the slope is a little bit more gradual now. However,

all this area, crushed by the water. You can see the bridge taken out right there. This is 45 miles upriver from where the collapse happened. All of these factors combining to create an epic disaster the likes of which we

have never witnessed before on camera, and unfortunately, in many regards, completely predictable.