• A cloudburst in Jadon village of Himachal Pradesh’s Solan district left seven members of a family dead. 

• Two houses were washed away in the cloudburst that took place on the night of August 13 and six people were rescued.

• Heavy rains in Himachal Pradesh triggered landslides, blocking several roads, including the key Shimla-Chandigarh road.

What is cloudburst?

• Cyclones and cloudbursts cause flash floods and lead to huge losses. 

• Due to peculiar climatic conditions, some parts of the country experience sudden unprecedented heavy rain known as cloudbursts.

• Cloudburst is a natural and common phenomenon in the Himalayas.

• Generally, cloudburst refers to particularly heavy precipitation in a short period of time over a limited geographical area. 

• It is often defined as more than 100 mm per hour rainfall within a limited geographical area of a few square kilometres. 

• It is just as if the whole cloud has suddenly precipitated its moisture at once, as though it had been pricked and suddenly collapsed. 

• It is very difficult to predict the cloudbursts due to its very small scale in space and time. 

• Cloudbursts do occur at plains, however, mountainous regions are more prone to cloud bursts due to orography.

• Hilly areas in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, the northern areas of West Bengal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura and the coastal areas in the states of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat and Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakhshadweep are more prone to such phenomena.

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