https://www.wjhnow.com/tags/glaciercollapse/Recent content in GlacierCollapse on What Just Happened NOWHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usSun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.wjhnow.com/p/risk-of-glacial-lake-burst-near-china-nepal-border-eases/Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.wjhnow.com/p/risk-of-glacial-lake-burst-near-china-nepal-border-eases/<img src="https://www.wjhnow.com/img/2026-08-30_glacial%20lake.jpg" alt="Featured image of post Risk of Glacial Lake Burst Near China-Nepal Border Eases" /><h1 id="waters-dropping-at-the-border-now-theres-another-lake">Water’s Dropping at the Border. Now There’s Another Lake. </h1><p><strong>GYIRONG, Tibet-Nepal Border</strong> — After 3 days of satellite updates, there’s finally some good news.</p> <p>The lake that formed on the Tibet-Nepal line is draining. Not fast. But it’s draining.</p> <p>As of Saturday morning, China’s Water Ministry has it at <strong>99,000 square meters</strong>. That’s down about <strong>21,000 square meters</strong> since Thursday. For context, that’s roughly 14 football fields of water that’s moved on.</p> <p>It shouldn’t have been there to begin with.</p> <h2 id="what-happened">What happened </h2><p>On Wednesday, a glacier collapse sent a wall of rock and ice down the Purepu Tsangpo. It took out the Gyirong crossing completely.</p> <p><strong>7 confirmed dead. 554 still missing.</strong></p> <p>The roads are gone and phone networks are down. The fear wasn’t just the flood we already had. It was the next one. If that natural dam gave way, it would have hit crews working downstream with basically no warning.</p> <p>On Friday, 15 personnel from China Aneng were flown in with drones and satellite gear to monitor it. Water did spill over Friday afternoon and everyone was pulled back for a few hours. It looked bad on the feed. Then the data came back stable and teams went back in.</p> <h2 id="bad-news-a-second-lake">Bad news: A second lake </h2><p>There’s a second lake now. Lower down the slide path.</p> <p>Officials say it’s bigger than the first, <strong>over 120,000 sqm</strong>, but they don’t know the depth yet. Nobody does.</p> <p>It’s raining again in the valley. About 50 workers are out digging through what’s left of the port with shovels. On Friday, the first team in said all they found was rubble.</p> <p>So yeah, the first lake is shrinking. And yeah, we’re watching a second one form.</p> <hr> <p><strong>Attribution</strong><br> This report is based on eyewitness updates and official data from China’s Water Ministry. It has been rewritten and contextualized by the WJHnow editorial team.</p>