A late monsoon landslide incident in Nepal

Regular readers will know that Nepal is country in which I have a particular interest. The landslides there are dominated by the very strong monsoonal signal seen in the summer months. Usually by late September the monsoon is fading and normal life resumes. Not this year, which has seen a sudden late burst of rainfall in the west of the country. The map below shows the TRMM data for the last three days, with areas of intense rainfall highlighted in red and yellow colours:


It is possible to extract from the TRMM site the actual rainfall data that sits behind this map. So here is the cumulative rainfall for this region over the last week. This should be taken as being indicative only, but it is clear that there has been a substantial amount of rain:

The consequence has been a large number of landslides, several of which have killed people. To date the list that I have collated is as follows:

Date	Location	Number of fatalities
06/10/2009	Mastamandu VDC 1, Garkhagaon, Dadeldura	12
06/10/2009	Dewrali VDC 3, Tanahu	1
06/10/2009	Silgadhi-14, Pagari in Doti district	1
06/10/2009	Patalkot VDC of Achham	13
06/10/2009	Bindyabasini-1, Accham	1
06/10/2009	Majhigaun-3, Bajhang	2
06/10/2009	Malladehi-7, Baitadi	1
06/10/2009	Siddheswari VDC, Accham	5
07/10/2009	Thapakhana village, Parvat	4
07/10/2009	Marku VDC of Achham	3
08/10/2009	Syadi VDC, Dhangadhi	4
Total		47

This is a pretty grim total. Fortunately, the weather does now seem to be improving.