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ISLAMABAD: Cloudbursts are causing chaos in mountainous parts of India and Pakistan, with tremendous amounts of rain falling in a short period of time over a concentrated area. The intense, sudden deluges have proved fatal in both countries.
As many as 300 people died in one northwestern Pakistani district, Buner, after a cloudburst. The strength and volume of rain triggered flash flooding, landslides and mudflows. Boulders from steep slopes came crashing down with the water to flatten homes and reduce villages to rubble.
The northern Indian state of Uttarakhand had a cloudburst earlier this month. Local TV showed floodwaters surging down a mountain and crashing into Dharali, a Himalayan village. In 2013, more than 6,000 people died and 4,500 villages were affected when a similar cloudburst struck the state.
Here’s what to know about cloudbursts:
They are complex and extreme weather events
A cloudburst occurs when a large volume of rain falls in a very short period, usually more than 100 millimeters (about 4 inches) within an hour over a localized area, around 30 square kilometers (11.6 square miles).
Cloudbursts are sudden and violent, with devastating consequences and widespread destruction, and can be the equivalent of several hours of normal rainfall or longer. The event is the bursting of a cloud and the discharge of its contents at the same time, like a rain bomb.
Several factors contribute to a cloudburst, including warm, moist air rising upward, high humidity, low pressure, instability and convective cloud formation.
Moist air is forced to rise after encountering a hill or mountain. This rising air cools and condenses. Clouds that are large, dense and capable of heavy rainfall form.
Hills or mountains act like barriers and often trap these clouds, so they cannot disperse or move easily. Strong upward currents keep moisture suspended inside the clouds, delaying rainfall.
When the clouds cannot hold the accumulated moisture anymore, they burst and release it all at once.
 

India and Pakistan have ideal conditions
Cloudbursts thrive in moisture, monsoons and mountains. Regions of India and Pakistan have all three, making them vulnerable to these extreme weather events.
The Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges are home to the world’s highest and most famous peaks, spanning multiple countries including India and Pakistan.
The frequency of cloudbursts in these two South Asian nations has been steadily rising due to a warming atmosphere, because a warmer air mass can hold more moisture, creating conditions for sudden and intense downpours.
The South Asian region has traditionally had two monsoon seasons. One typically lasts from June to September, with rains moving southwest to northeast. The other, from roughly October to December, moves in the opposite direction.
But with more planet-warming gases in the air, the rain now only loosely follows this pattern.
This is because the warmer air can hold more moisture from the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, and that rain then tends to get dumped all at once. It means the monsoon is punctuated with intense flooding and dry spells, rather than sustained rain throughout.
The combination of moisture, mountains and monsoons force these moisture-laden winds upward, triggering sudden condensation and cloudbursts.
They are hard to predict, but precaution is possible
It’s difficult to predict cloudbursts because of their size, duration, suddenness and complex atmospheric mechanisms.
Asfandyar Khan Khattak, a Pakistani official from the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said there was “no forecasting system anywhere in the world” that could predict the exact time and location of a cloudburst.

The Pakistani government said that while an early warning system was in place in Buner district, where hundreds of people died after a cloudburst, the downpour was so sudden and intense that it struck before residents could be alerted.
Community organization SOST, which is also the name of a border village in Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, says precautions are possible.
It advises people to avoid building homes right next to rivers and valleys, to postpone any travel to hilly areas if heavy rain is forecast, to keep an emergency kit ready, and to avoid traveling on mountainous roads during heavy rain or at night.
It recommends afforestation to reduce surface runoff and enhance water absorption, and regular clearing and widening of riverbanks and drainage channels.
Climate change is fueling their frequency
Experts say cloudbursts have increased in recent years, partly due to climate change, while damage from associated storms has also increased due to unplanned development in mountain areas.
Climate change has directly amplified the triggers of cloudbursts in Pakistan, especially. Every 1°C rise allows the air to hold about 7 percent more moisture, increasing the potential for heavy rainfall in short bursts.
The warming of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea pushes more moisture into the atmosphere. Melting glaciers and snow alter local weather patterns, making rainfall events more erratic and extreme. Environmental degradation, in the form of deforestation and wetland loss, reduces the land’s ability to absorb water, magnifying flash floods.
Climate change has been a central driver in the destruction seen in Pakistan’s northern areas.
“Rising global temperatures have supercharged the hydrologic cycle, leading to more intense and erratic rainfall,” said Khalid Khan, a former special secretary for climate change in Pakistan and chairman of climate initiative PlanetPulse.
“In our northern regions, warming accelerates glacier melt, adds excessive moisture to the atmosphere, and destabilizes mountain slopes. In short, climate change is making rare events more frequent, and frequent events more destructive.”
 

KYIV, Ukraine: European and NATO leaders announced Sunday they will join President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington to present a united front in talks with President Donald Trump on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine and firming up US security guarantees now on the negotiating table.
Leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Finland are rallying around the Ukrainian president after his exclusion from Trump’s summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their pledge to be at Zelensky’s side at the White House on Monday is an apparent effort to ensure the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated Zelensky in a heated Oval Office encounter.
“The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr. Zelensky to the hilt,” said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.
“It’s a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,” he said.
Putin agreed at his summit in Alaska with Trump that the US and its European allies could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war, special US envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
It “was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that,” said Witkoff, who called it “game-changing.”

Later, French President Emmanuel Macron said the European delegation will ask Trump to back plans they drafted to beef-up Ukraine’s armed forces — already Europe’s largest outside of Russia — with more training and equipment to secure any peace.
“We need a credible format for the Ukrainian army, that’s the first point, and say — we Europeans and Americans — how we’ll train them, equip them, and finance this effort in the long-term,” the French leader said.
The European-drafted plans also envision an allied force in Ukraine away from the front lines to reassure Kyiv that peace will hold and to dissuade another Russian invasion, Macron said. He spoke after a nearly two-hour video call Sunday with nations in Europe and further afield — including Canada, Australia and Japan — that are involved in the so-called “coalition of the willing.”
The “several thousand men on the ground in Ukraine in the zone of peace” would signal that “our fates are linked,” Macron said.
“This is what we must discuss with the Americans: Who is ready to do what?” Macron said. “Otherwise, I think the Ukrainians simply cannot accept commitments that are theoretical.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier at a news conference in Brussels with Zelensky that “we welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. And the ‘coalition of the willing’ — including the European Union — is ready to do its share.”
Macron said the substance of security guarantees will be more important than whether they are given an Article 5-type label.
“A theoretical article isn’t enough, the question is one of substance,” he said. “We must start out by saying that the first of the security guarantees for Ukraine is a strong Ukrainian army.”
Along with Von der Leyen and Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Finnish President Alexander Stubb also said they’ll will take part in Monday’s talks, as will secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte.
The European leaders’ support could help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukraine risks being railroaded into a peace deal.
Neil Melvin, director of international security at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said European leaders are trying to “shape this fast-evolving agenda.” After the Alaska summit, the idea of a ceasefire appears all-but-abandoned, with the narrative shifting toward Putin’s agenda of ensuring Ukraine does not join NATO or even the EU.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that a possible ceasefire is “not off the table” but that the best way to end the war would be through a “full peace deal.”
Putin has implied that he sees Europe as a hindrance to negotiations. He has also resisted meeting Zelensky in person, saying that such a meeting can only take place once the groundwork for a peace deal has been laid.
Speaking to the press after his meeting with Trump, the Russian leader raised the idea that Kyiv and other European capitals could “create obstacles” to derail potential progress with “behind-the-scenes intrigue.”
For now, Zelensky offers the Europeans the “only way” to get into the discussions about the future of Ukraine and European security, says RUSI’s Melvin.

However, the sheer number of European leaders potentially in attendance means the group will have to be “mindful” not to give “contradictory” messages, Melvin said.
“The risk is they look heavy-handed and are ganging up on Trump,” he added. “Trump won’t want to be put in a corner.”
Although details remain hazy on what Article 5-like security guarantees from the US and Europe would entail for Ukraine, it could mirror NATO membership terms, in which an attack on one member of the alliance is seen as an attack on all.
Zelensky continues to stress the importance of both US and European involvement in any negotiations.
“A security guarantee is a strong army. Only Ukraine can provide that. Only Europe can finance this army, and weapons for this army can be provided by our domestic production and European production. But there are certain things that are in short supply and are only available in the United States,” he said at the press conference Sunday alongside Von der Leyen.
Zelensky also pushed back against Trump’s assertion — which aligned with Putin’s preference — that the two sides should negotiate a complete end to the war, rather than first securing a ceasefire. Zelensky said a ceasefire would provide breathing room to review Putin’s demands.
“It’s impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons,” he said. “Putin does not want to stop the killing, but he must do it.”