SolveClimate / By Kunda Dixit

Bursting glacial lakes, storm surges, and drought among the current dangers.

This story was reprinted from SolveClimate. It first appeared on Himal.

Namgye Chumbi was weeding his potato garden in the village of Phakding in Nepal’s Khumbu region below Mount Everest on the morning of Aug. 4, 1985. Because of the monsoon season, there were not too many trekkers hiking up the trail towards Namche Bazaar. It was a brilliantly clear day, unusual for the monsoon season, and he was working by the banks of the Dudh Kosi River.

True to its name, the river was milky white and frothing, as the water tumbled noisily over boulders. Yet around 2 in the afternoon, the river suddenly became strangely silent. The water level went down, and Namgye sensed danger.

Much in the same way as coastal dwellers saw the sea recede before the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Dudh Kosi was about to reveal its terrifying avatar.

“I noticed that the white water had turned muddy brown, and in the distance I heard a thundering sound like an approaching helicopter,” Namgye recalls. “I looked upstream and saw this huge wall of dark brown water approaching very fast.”

There was no time to think. Namgye dropped everything and began to run up the mountain. His wife, Sherkima, had more presence of mind and picked up their two young children, Hira and Tsering, and followed her husband. They reached a ledge as the thunderous flood raced beneath them, lapping at their heels. The ground was shaking like an earthquake, and the sound was deafening.