Sciency Thoughts: Rajouri District

Sunday, 4 November 2018

Landslide kills nine-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir, India.

A nine-year-old-girl has died and three of her relatives have been injured in the Rajouri District of Jammu and Kashmir, India, on Saturday 3 November 2018. Shabina Kousar was a member of a group of nomadic Bakarwal people, who had set up a tent encampment close to a shrine in the village of Chatyar, as part of an annual migration between summer grazing grounds in the high mountains of the region and winter grazing grounds in the lowlands.

The approximate location of the 3 November 2018 Rajouri District landslide. Google Maps.

The incident occurred during a series of thunderstorms which swept across Jammu and Kashmir over the past three days. Thunderstorms occur when warm, moist bodies of air encounter cooler, drier air packages. The warm air rises over the cooler air until it rises above its dew point (the point where it cools to far to retain its water content as vapour), and the water precipitates out, falling as rain, sleet or hail.

In a separate incident a villager was killed and two relatives injured by a lightning strike in Reasi District. Warm moist air passing over the surface of the Earth acts as an electrical generator, creating a negative charge in the cloud tops and a positive charge at the ground (or occasionally in a second cloud layer). The atmosphere acts as an electrical insulator, allowing this potential to build up, until water begins to precipitate out. This allows a channel of ionised air to form, carrying a current between the clouds and the ground, which we perceive as lightning.

Seven conformed deaths as heavy rains and snow bring flooding and avalanches to Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Seven people have been confirmed dead as heavy rain and snow have fallen across Kashmir on Thursday 6 April 2017. Five of the deaths were caused by avalanches caused by snowfall in the Ladakh Region, with three soldiers killed and another three injured following an avalanche in Batalik and two civilians, a father and son, killed in another incident in Kargil. A number of other people are missing in the area, and may have also lost their lives in avalanches. In Rajouri District a woman died after being stuck by lightning, while a young girl was swept away by a flach flood in Kupwara District.

Indian soldiers rescuing civilians from flooding in Jammu and Kashmir this week. SSBCrack.

The Jammu and Kashmir region is extremely prone to flooding events, particularly in the in the monsoon season in July and August, when rainfall often exceeds 650 mm per month in many areas, but the state has a fairly wet climate year round and rainfall in excess of 40-50 mm per month in January-March is not unusual, while about 85 mm is typical for April. Significant snowfall this late in the year is unusual, and likely to result in avalanches, as new snow falls onto unstable old snow which has begun to melt in the spring thaw.