It started with a sudden spike in temperature, minus 13 Celsius, around the Himalayan glaciers. Then came the explosion: a deluge of melted ice racing down at a rate of 9.4 million litres per second, unleashing a landslide of sludge that wiped out everything in its path.
A disaster that wiped out a decades-long project to bring pipe-borne water to Nepal’s capital shows the mismatch between slow-moving donor-financed efforts and rapid global warming.