The Ben Mulroney Show - Glacial Outburst May Have Caused Deadly Nepal Floods

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

On today's episode of 'The Ben Mulroney Show,' Ben welcomes Dr. Kent Moore, PhD FRCS, from the University of Toronto Mississauga. The sudden and catastrophic floods in Nepal may have been caused by a glacial outburst. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With so much experience to draw on, it's like having your own coach. Whatever your favorite game, we have your playbook. OZoon. Well played. Discover free sports tips, casino games and poker guides at OZoon.net. Near the end of the show a couple of days ago, we were taken aback by some images and videos that were all over social media of the border crossing between Nepal and China, where it looked like security footage, a locked off camera, where all of a sudden people just are running and running in one direction.

then within a moment, it's like the world consumed that entire area, a landslide, a glacial outburst floods led to 2,400 people missing. 17,000 children need aid. There are, they're trying to get through the rubble. It is a natural disaster, the likes of which, I mean, I've never seen anything like that. And so to talk about what exactly happened, we're joined by Dr. Kent Moore, PhD from the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Doctor, thank you for being here. Thank you, Ben.

So, yeah, the sheer force of nature that we witnessed, because those people were running, but there was nowhere for them to go. They were not going to, they were not going to make it out. What exactly happened? Well, so we're still 100% clear what happened. But it appears now that there was a glacier on the side of a mountain, and the part of the mountain and the glacier collapsed, falling perhaps 4,000 feet or so, into the Lende River. And that huge mass hitting the river caused essentially a flood to go,

a pulse of water to move downstream. It looks like it was like some of the video that I've seen, it looks like it was 30 feet high. And it just, I mean, the video of it consuming that border crossing is really biblical. I mean, it's just like one minute. It's normal the next minute. There's just, you know, water way up the side of the valley. So it really was a really biblical flood when it came through.

And I'll see, I'm sort of, you know, we're really concerned by the number of people who were trapped. But they just, that's nothing to do, right? There was no way to escape that wall of water. I mean, we're going to, I'm sure everyone's hoping and praying for miracles here. And, you know, when these things happen, it's, we always, I mean, we don't always, but there's occasionally a story of somebody who survives in the rubble of an earthquake for seven days. And we're thankful for that one small miracle.

But I've got to think with mud like this, it's, there's nowhere to go. It consumes you. It covers you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can see it destroying bridges and, you know, just like, you know, paper mesh. Yeah, no, the water, you know, water's amazingly, you know, it's quite a dense material and it gets moving. It can cause real, real damage. And we're hearing this expression that I've never heard before, glacial outburst floods.

So that's a particular, that's the particular type of event that we witnessed here. Well, so it's a bit complicated, but what happens, so what happens quite often in Nepal is that as the glaciers melt, they produce lakes at the bottom of the, where the glacier is. And if those lakes, there's usually some sort of marine at the end, if those Marines collapse and the water can flood downstream quite quickly. So this is a version of a glacier outflow flood, but it was triggered not. not by a marine collapsing, but just because the ice and rock avalanche coming down into the water. There's about 2,000 lakes in Nepal that are potentially subject to these glacial outflow floods. And I witnessed one, and I was climbing about 10 years ago, and even 10 years after the flood, the damage was just, I mean, you know, 20, 30 meters of the riverbed had just been eroded all the way. the water is so powerful and the amount of energy.

I mean, people have estimated that the rock ice avalanche that came down generated probably a thousand tons of TNT was the amount of energy. So it's just because of so much, you know, gravity is falling in a great distance. Just that's so massive that just the amount of energy is something which, you know, is just so much that it can cause an incredible amount of damage. I heard very early on, and I don't know if this was speculation or whether it was political, but people said this was a consequence of climate change.

Do we know that for sure right now, or is this, does this stuff just happen at different times of year? I have no idea. Well, Avalanche just can happen any time of the year. What's happening in the Himalay is the Himalay are warming faster than the rest of the world. And currently there's permafrost on the high mountains in the Himalayas. And that permafrost does two things. It kind of obviously helps freeze the rock onto the mountainside. And also it helps freeze the glaciers onto the mountainside.

So there was an earthquake, a mild earthquake, just before the avalanche. So it probably triggered the avalanche. but the weakening of the soil because the permafrost is melting probably was contributed. If you recall in 2014 and 2015, there were avalanches that closed Mount Everest. And again, something very similar where in 2014 it was essentially a hanging glacier, one of these glaciers that essentially is frozen to a steep rock side that collapsed, probably because, again, warming had weakened the bond there. And then in 2015, it was an avalanche that triggered, sorry, there was an earthquake that triggered avalanches that came down and devastated base camp.

So these things are, you know, so the region is warming. And so climate change probably played a role. Sorry, sorry, doctor, I just want to drill down on that. Is it warm? Are the Himalayas warming more because of the rapid and constant development, industrialization, massive increasing carbon. footprint of China? No, that's a really good question. So it turns out carbon dioxide is pretty well mixed in the atmosphere.

So it doesn't matter where it was produced within a few days. So it's just well mixed. I'm not really sure why it's warming faster, frankly. One of the thoughts is that because it's so high, it's sort of sticking up quite high into the tovester. I mean, you know, it's 4,000, 5,000 meters high at the tetan plateau. And that's allowing it to heat more rapidly. But really don't know why.

We just know that it is warming more rapidly. But it's not a local effect. Yeah. It's just a global effect. Just like the Arctic is warming faster too. There we probably know why. But in the Himalaya, we don't know why, but it is warming faster than the rest of the world. Well, we heard that they had to stop the rescue operations because because of this shift of water and earth and mud,

there was a newly formed lake was created and there was a fear that the barrier of the lake could unleash another flood. And so this is literally the topography and the geography has been changed overnight. Yeah. So what's happened is that some of the rock mud sort of produced a dam. I think there's two of these dams and the water is still flowing down. So the concern is that these dams will, you know, when the water rises above the level of the, it's not a real, real dam, but since you've got that debris, which is clogging the river, then you'll get another burst of water downstream. And that water will erode, again, because water is such a powerful agent, it'll erode the dam. And so you've got a huge pulse of water, which would be more like a glacial outflow flood, actually, than what happened originally. And so, This is a big concern.

These things may drain kind of slowly, but they could drain catastrophically. And if they do, there'd be another pulse of water going down, downriver, which would be quite, quite large. And it would move quite quickly. And that's where the concern there. Dr. Kent Moore of the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Thank you so much for walking us through and making sense of the images that we saw. Our hearts obviously go out to everyone who's... who's missing. We really are hoping for a miracle. We hope that the rescue crews are able to do

their work and save as many people as they can. But in the meantime, I wish you a very good weekend, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Bye now.