Wednesday's horrific flash flooding at the border of Nepal and Tibet was, first and foremost, a human tragedy: at least 500 people have been killed and more than 2,000 are still missing.
But it may also have been a weather warning — a sign of strange and dangerous things to come as the planet keeps warming and the climate keeps changing.
An initial assessment by a group of geologists and glaciologists indicates that the disaster was "likely set off at least in part by an enormous chunk of ice snapping off a glacier," according to the New York Times.
It's a phenomenon known as an ice avalanche. In this case, preliminary seismological readings and satellite imagery suggest that a glacial slab about 2,000 feet wide plummeted almost 4,000 feet, smashing into the valley below. When something that big falls that far, it releases vast amounts of energy on impact — enough to pulverize ice into a massive surge of floodwater. (The U.S. Geological Survey now says the force of Wednesday's "glacial collapse" was equal to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.)
Usually, flash flooding is triggered by heavy rainfall. But Wednesday was dry — and "satellite images show a vanishing snow cover over the previous day, indicating warmer temperatures that may have melted the glacier and contributed to the ice avalanche," according to the Times.
Could this be our new normal? Glaciers are melting throughout the fast-warming Himalayas, risking more avalanches and more flash floods. Meanwhile, the summer of 2026 — across the United States and Europe, especially — hasn't just been warm.
The heat waves keep coming. Records keep falling. Fires keep igniting. El Niño keeps strengthening. The ocean keeps getting hotter. Humidity keeps rising. And typically arid places like, say, Southern California end up feeling more like Florida, or the Amazon, as a result.
If it all seems connected, that's because it very well may be. In March, the New York Times reported that "a growing number of scientists" agree that "the effects of climate change are intensifying in ways that have surprised even experts."
"Many of the consequences of global warming — such as more intense storms, warming oceans and melting glaciers — are arriving faster and more powerfully than many scientists had expected," the paper explained.
The summer of 2026 has felt a lot like Exhibit A.
Yet another heat wave has been scorching a large swath of the U.S. over the last week or so, inflicting 100-plus-degree temperatures on the southern third of the country, from California to Texas to the tip of Florida. More than 80 million Americans have been under an extreme heat warning or heat advisory, according to the National Weather Service.
Parts of Los Angeles County have registered triple-digit highs. Las Vegas will hover around 105 through Saturday; Phoenix has topped 110. Temperatures in Dallas reached 109°F on Sunday. Last week, Miami hit 100°F degrees for the first time ever.
But that's been the pattern for months now. August kicked off with major heat waves across the western U.S. and along the East Coast. In July, a huge northern heat wave subjected more than 125 million Americans to some sort of heat alert.
At the same time, Western Europe has endured (with minimal air-conditioning) multiple grueling heat waves of its own — the "most severe and widespread ever," according to scientists. Both continents have battled drought and wildfires as a result, while similarly extreme weather has triggered typhoons and flash floods in Asia.
The overall stats are striking. Western Europe has experienced its hottest start to summer on record, with June and July 2026 setting consecutive regional temperature records — and the combined June-July period surpassing all previous two-month summer records for the area.
