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On August 6th 2010, a series of cloudbursts have left 44 persons dead and over 300 injured in the frontier Leh town of Ladakh. Massive land and mudslides triggered by the bursts and flash floods that followed. Cloudbursts struck the town at approximately midnight, triggering flash floods and mudslides.
This article is not about the tragedy but a subject study of the mystery of atmospherics generally known as CLOUDBURST. It is a sudden heavy downpour of rain of a comparative brief duration. In its intensity and its concentration in time and space it is no different from a tornado or cyclone. Cloudbursts descend from very high clouds, sometimes with tops above 15 kilometers with a fall rate equal to or greater than 100mm (3.94 inches) per hour. In the Indian subcontinent, a cloudburst usually occurs when the monsoon cloud drifts northwards, from the Bay of Bengal or Arabian Sea across the plains, then onto the Himalaya and bursts.
Let us first understand the simple rain or what are clouds ? They are a collection of very fine droplets or water vapor and NOT a coherent mass which ruptures like a water balloon. They ratio of air and water vapor in cloud is almost thirty thousands parts to one part. These water vapors condenses due to low temperatures in the atmosphere and come down to earth as rain which is intermittent.
In the occasion of cloudburst water falls from the sky in form of streams rather than drops. These streams or torrents are the product of thunderstorms. What happens is that a huge thunder cloud several miles in depth precipitates en-masse to the ground at a very fast speed which results in instant floods. Violent up-rushing currents of air storm out before the thunderstorm. As a result the air expands and cools down. The moisture in air condenses. However, the upwards blast of air is so strong that for a short time there is no rain fall. But when the storms weakens, a large accumulation of water in the sky in any form falls down at one time in one go. A thunderstorm is fed by rising streams of air from over-heated grounds. This storm throttles the supply of warm air and abrupt condensation occurs in atmosphere which causes the cloud burst.
