The deadly flooding in Nepal on Wednesday was likely set off at least in part by an enormous chunk of ice snapping off a glacier and cascading thousands of feet to the valley below, according to an initial assessment by a group of geologists and glaciologists. The phenomenon is known as an ice avalanche.“It looks like a glacier in the area basically snapped off in a clean break, allowing it to fall just over a vertical kilometre to the valley bottom,” said Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada who studied satellite imagery to analyse what happened.“The bottom looks like a bomb exploded – it’s just deposits from the broken-up glacier,” he said.But he said that it was too early to rule out other possible factors behind the flash flooding. Hundreds of people are missing in Nepal and the Chinese territory of Tibet after floodwaters cascaded through river valleys on Wednesday morning. Warming temperatures caused by climate change may have accelerated the glacier’s collapse, scientists said, but they added that it was too early to determine a precise cause.GRAPHIC WARNING: This video contains sensitive footage that may disturb some viewers. A massive flash flood in the Himalayan border areas of Nepal and ‌China's Tibet washed away villages while damaging roads, bridges and power projects in a region bordering Tibet, authorities… pic.twitter.com/risp0biV2w— Reuters (@Reuters) August 26, 2026