REGIONAL weather forecasts indicate that El Niño conditions may influence the coming monsoons. International meteorological forums anticipate excessive heat spells and below-normal rainfall, especially in Pakistan’s plains. However, this forecast does not rule out the possibility of occasional cloudbursts that generate torrential spates in the highlands and urban flooding in the plains. Similarly, excessive heat can melt snow at a faster pace in the mountains, which will swell the rivers. The Met Office has issued warnings of glacial lake outburst floods during heatwaves.

The lessons of the catastrophic floods of 2022 and 2025 need to be recalled. Encroachments on riverbeds and the blockage of natural waterways intensified those floods. Dried-up streams and stretches of riverbeds, as well as seasonal nullahs, frequently mistaken for empty land, are often occupied by illegal housing societies, crops, roads and squatters. Floodplains are seized for large-scale cropping, and cordoned off by illegally erected embankments. Over time, makeshift shelters are built, forming haphazard settlements. In urban areas, clumsily located residential and commercial neighbourhoods encroach on rainwater streams, open nullahs and arterial drains. In........

© Dawn