Nepal Flood: Not a Glacial Lake Burst, but a Mountain Collapse

Rekindle the old ways of learning with Randall Carlsonsacred geometry, ancient mysteries & the hidden patterns of our world

A mountain face in Nepal collapsed on the morning of August 26 and took part of a glacier down with it. The flood that followed reached water speeds Randall calculates on camera at 111 miles per hour. It destroyed the warning gauges before they could transmit a single reading. Villages downstream got a text message after the wave had already passed through. The early coverage called it a glacial lake outburst. It was not one. The glacier was on top of the mountain that fell.

Rekindle the old ways of learning with Randall Carlsonsacred geometry, ancient mysteries & the hidden patterns of our world

Randall Carlson and Becket Fusik trace the event from the collapse on Langtang Lirung to the one gauge reading that survived, far downstream of the peak flow. Then Randall puts the number in context. By his live estimate, the ice age Missoula floods that carved the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington were roughly 600 times larger. Planetary scale movement of water is not a theory. It is measured, published, and still written into the landscape, and events like this one are the yardstick that lets us picture it.

Also in this episode: what the Greenland ice cores show about how fast climate can shift without human help, Randall's response to the climate change framing of the disaster, the flood traditions George Catlin recorded among 120 Native American tribes, and a preview of Randall's field trip to the Finger Lakes, where glacial floodwater scoured bedrock more than 1,000 feet below sea level.