The mountains are angry
Rainy days in Jammu and Kashmir are no longer the days to enjoy. Earlier, rains during summers especially monsoons used to mean days of steady rain, cool breeze, green fields and full rivers.
However, since many years now the situation has changed altogether. This year in the month of June alone the region has witnessed 20 cloudbursts and fourteen of them in Jammu division alone.
From Doda and Kishtwar to Ramban and Poonch, the mountains are coming down in the form of water, mud and boulders. What was once called a ‘freak event’ is now an annual summer ordeal. And the Chenab Valley is paying the heaviest price.
Even Meteorologists are baffled. J&K is shifting from moderate, spread-out rainfall to short-duration, high-intensity bursts. Warmer air holds more moisture. When that moisture releases over steep catchments, it falls in minutes, not hours.
Notably, the Himalayas force moisture-laden winds upward. They cool, condense, and dump rain over narrow valleys. Add to it the rising temperatures and changing wind patterns, and a recipe for sudden, localised devastation is what we get in return.
Ironically, Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban sit on fragile geology. Steep slopes, deep gorges and loose soil. When 100mm of rain falls in an hour, there is nowhere for the water to go except run down that too in high speed.
Areas like Thathri, Bhaderwah, Prem Nagar, Drabshalla become the first causality. These names have appeared in disaster reports too many times this season. Roads vanish. Homes are swept away. Bridges that took years to build disappear in a night.
What is worrying is that the human activity has made it worse. Unplanned road widening, slope cutting for highways and tunnels, construction on riverbanks — all of it strips the mountain of its natural ability to absorb water. We are building as if the mountains were static.
The flash floods that are occurring out of these cloud bursts are hitting livelihoods, safety, and the future of mountain communities. Flash floods don’t just damage infrastructure. They destroy apple orchards, wash away paddy, block the highways for days, and cut off villages from hospitals and schools.
Each cloudburst pushes families deeper into debt and uncertainty. And the risk will only grow. Climate researchers warn that without ecological safeguards, scientific land-use planning, and robust early warning systems, these events will become more frequent and more destructive.
The way damages to the hillsides and adjacent localities is taking place we need to act fast so that the situation can be controlled and rectified to an extent where the damages can be minimised.
The authorities need to get strict on unauthorised constructions. No construction should be allowed in high-risk nullahs and landslide zones. A strict audit should also be conducted on all ongoing road and tunnel projects for slope stability. This will at least ensure some corrective measures.
The mountains are angry and are reacting. To heat, to deforestation, to concrete where there should be forest. For people in the Chenab Valley, the warning is already written on the rocks and in the rivers. We can keep calling each cloudburst an accident. Or we can accept that the climate has changed, and change with it. The Himalayas gave us life. It is time we learned to live with them.
