The flash floods that tore through the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26 were, for a few days, were described as a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). That assumption turned out to be wrong. Satellite analysis later showed the disaster began not with a lake bursting its banks, but with a chunk of glacier, ice and rock giving way on an unstable slope and crashing into a river valley below. 

For years, the dominant framework for understanding Himalayan flood risk has been the glacial lake. The Nepal event is a reminder that a slope does not........

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