The monsoon is yet to officially arrive, but the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand has already witnessed incessant rains, flash floods and hailstorms in the month of May. On May 30 early morning, around 3:30 am, villagers in Bangwadi village of Pauri Garhwal woke up with a start when they heard a loud noise which was followed by incessant rainfall and flash floods that washed away two cow shelters, damaged houses and blocked the Pauri-Srinagar highway for over six hours.
This wasn’t a one off event of intense rainfall in the hill state. Between May 3 and May 7, back-to-back incidents of flash floods, landslides and hailstorms were reported from several districts of the state. Fear gripped the local residents who were reminded of the devastating flash floods earlier this year in February in Chamoli district that left at least 72 dead and over 150 missing. Three hydel projects — Tapovan, Rishiganga, Vishnugad — were washed away too.
On May 3, a loud sound at around 4 pm, like an explosion was heard in the forest above Kumrada village in Chinyalisaur tehsil of district Uttarkashi. This was immediately followed by heavy rainfall and a deluge of muddy water, heavy rocks, and slush that inundated 400 hectares of agricultural fields.
“Two houses that came in the way of the crashing debris and water from the mountainsides disintegrated. Luckily, the residents escaped but not their two buffaloes and three goats,” Gangadhar Panwar, a resident of Kumrada and an eyewitness, told Gaon Connection.
Two days later, on May 5, a similar incident repeated at Ghat Bazar of district Chamoli, about 265 kilometres from Uttarkashi. Charan Singh Negi, owner of a fast food eatery in Ghat Bazar and president of the Vyapar Sangh, Vikas Nagar (Ghat), was home as all shops were shut on account of the COVID19 lockdown.
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“Around 2:30 pm, the weather began to change. It became overcast and soon it began raining heavily,” Negi recollected. “Just like it had happened in Kumrada, there was an explosive sound followed by a flood of muddy waters sweeping down the street,” he told Gaon Connection.
“The market which is spread over three kilometres was in a shambles. Huge boulders, muck, debris and uprooted trees had smashed into our shops. Thirty two shops were completely razed to the ground,” said Negi, whose shop was washed away too.
Badal phata vs cloudburst
While the local inhabitants refer to these incidents as badal phata or cloudburst, technically they cannot be classified as cloudbursts as according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), a cloudburst needs 10 centimetres of rainfall in the duration of an hour.
Explaining the reason behind these back to back ‘badal phata’ incidents, Rohit Thapliyal, Scientist with IMD Dehradun, told Gaon Connection: “The state witnessed rains because of the Westerly disturbance and thunderstorm activity.”
Nand Kishore Joshi, personnel of the State Disaster Response Force, made similar observations. “It wasn’t a cloud burst, but a spell of intense rain at a particular place that led to the flash floods…,” he said.
According to Ashok Priyadarshan Dimri, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Environmental Sciences: “These weather incidents in Uttarkashi and Chamoli, could be due to convective instability and orographic locking, in which the cloud formation is quick and leads to immediate rains within a short span.”
He explained that such weather incidents happen in closed valleys where the air rises vertically in the atmosphere due to heating.
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According to the local people, the incidents of badal phata, flash floods and forest fires have increased after the 2013 Kedarnath floods.
Increasing disasters
On May 5, Chaukhutiya in Almora district also reported a badal phata incident. “Around 1:30 pm, the weather suddenly changed. Dark clouds formed and there was a strong wind, thunder and lightning,” Manvendra Rana, a resident who was returning from work from the town that day, told Gaon Connection.
An orange alert was issued. But, little did the people of Chaukhutiya anticipate that flood waters would sweep away their fields, play ground and animals. “The highway was covered with slurry and the water rushed on the roads,” said Rana.
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Meanwhile, the same day a flash flood was also reported in Nandprayag in Tehri, followed by Kainchi Dham in district Nainital.
Local villagers have suffered losses worth lakhs. For instance, Charan Singh Negi, owner of a fast food eatery in Ghat Bazar, whose shop was washed away in the flash flood, has a bank loan of Rs 5 lakh on his head which he had taken in 2019 to set up his eatery. “I don’t know how I will repay that loan now,” he told Gaon Connection.
Mukesh Singh Rawat was devastated too. Rawat ran a store in Ghat bazar too. Just the day before the disaster, he had bought goods worth nearly Rs 8 lakh. Also, the homestay that he was building collapsed. He said he was staring at a loss of more than Rs 30 lakh.
Redefining disasters
According to state authorities, the incidents reported between May 3-7 were not categorised as cloud bursts, but intense rainfall events. The threshold set by the IMD for a cloudburst should be reviewed, he added.
According to Dimri, the rain pattern in the interior Himalayas is not measured by rain gauge at the micro or meso scale. For example, rainfall of 15mm, 20 mm for a short duration of, say 10 minutes, is not recorded. And most of these cloud bursts happen somewhere inside the valleys.
“Since, IMD stations are usually located either at the foothills of the Himalayas or at an elevation of two thousand metres, they are not able to monitor or gauge rainfall at a microscale level,” said Dimri.
The COVID19 lockdown proved to be a blessing in disguise as when these heavy rainfall incidents happened, people were mostly inside their homes and lives were saved.
“With so many incidents of natural disasters revisiting Uttarakhand, there is a need for proper vulnerability and risk analysis for better disaster warning and management linked to cloud burst events,” said Dimri.
Meanwhile, ahead of the monsoon, the Uttarakhand government is preparing for extreme weather events. The district heads have been asked to set up block-level disaster control rooms. Each district will have a nodal officer in all line departments to deal with natural disasters.
These nodal officers will be responsible for identifying locations or sites for putting up relief camps, procuring enough grain stock, and maintaining helipads for safe landing in case of emergency evacuation.
The district management has also been instructed to keep heavy machinery like the JCBs ready to clear roads and highways, in the event of landslides leading to road blocks that could disrupt supply and transportation in the mountains.
