Every year, as the monsoon creeps in, it brings more than just rain. It invites a familiar sense of uncertainty yet a certain dread.
The arrival of the 2025 monsoon was 15 days early, marked on May 29. Whilst early rains often are a blessing for agriculture, they now trigger alarms. This year’s premature downpour reminds us of the last monsoon, which caused widespread destruction.
September 2024 marked heavy rainfall across twenty-three districts, disrupting daily lives. Roads like the BP Highway were torn apart. In Syafrubesi, floods swept away the Miteri Bridge and the Syafrubesi–Rasuwagadhi road and even damaged the Rasuwagadhi Hydropower Project. As a landslide struck Mahendra Highway, two buses plunged into the Trishuli River. Bodies were found, but the buses still lie buried beneath the current.
It caused the highest casualties in 15 years with record rainfall. As of October 7, 2024, monsoon disasters have led to 246 deaths, injured 183, and left 18 missing. The damages are estimated at up to USD 32.5 million (NPR 4.35 billion) to energy infrastructure, USD 18.7 million (NPR 2.5 billion) to roads and over USD 45 million (NPR 6 billion) to agriculture. 37 highways, 312 telecom sites, 16 hydropower projects (totalling 664 MW), and 5 transmission lines were also affected.
These numbers remain a part of an ongoing reality where rain exposes the cracks in infrastructure, planning, and priorities. We are yet to see what this monsoon season entails for us.
It’s Not Just the Rain
Rainfall, by itself, isn’t the root cause. The monsoon is a seasonal reality, often predictable to a certain extent and essential to ecology and economy. The real issue is how the nation responds to it.
While the topography is naturally challenging with high hills, deep valleys, and vulnerable geological formations, disasters don’t occur entirely because of them. They happen when development ignores the environment it operates in. Roads built without slope stabilisation. Settlements expanding into floodplains. Forests are cleared without reforestation. Rapid growth of urban centres without proper drainage.
All of this creates a situation where even a moderate rainfall can trigger landslides, flash floods, and infrastructure collapse. And when the country only relies on reactive disaster response, planning often skips critical steps that would prevent damage in the first place. This leads to stockpiling and distributing relief materials and bringing in engineers after things have gone wrong.
The 1993 Bagmati floods, where over 540 mm of rain fell in a single day, triggering landslides and killing hundreds, were a national wake-up call. It is because, thirty years later, history repeated itself. Once again, dozens of lives were lost, highways collapsed, and critical energy and trade infrastructure—like hydropower stations and bridges—suffered major damage.
What the Experts Are Saying
Hydrology and climate science experts have warned about monsoon-induced disasters for years. Nepal’s average temperature is rising at twice the global rate — 0.056°C per year compared to the world average of 0.03°C. As a result, rainfall has become more erratic and intense, causing longer dry periods followed by sudden, overwhelming downpours.
The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology has forecasted above-normal rainfall, with an expected 35-60% more than average. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) has predicted that around two million (1,997,731) people from 457,145 households could be affected by monsoon-induced disasters. This year anticipates an even higher risk of floods, landslides, inundation, excessive rain, land erosion, and flash floods.
Beyond temperature rise, glacier melt and unregulated river flow, particularly in the north, have also increased the frequency of flash floods.
GLOF (glacial lake outburst flood) is a recent phenomenon. On August 16, 2024, a devastating flood struck Thame in the Khumbu region due to an outburst flood from Thyanbo glacial lake, destroying 20 houses and displacing 135 locals. Recently, on July 8, 2025, a massive flash flood in the Bhotekoshi River—triggered by a supraglacial lake drainage—washed away a bridge on the China-Nepal border, killed nine people, left 20 missing, and damaged ten hydropower facilities, reducing capacity equivalent to powering 600,000 homes.
In 2023, ICIMOD’s assessment, Water, Ice, Society, and Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, showed that the glaciers, snow, and permafrost of the Hindu Kush Himalaya are “undergoing unprecedented and largely irreversible changes over human timescales, primarily driven by climate change” and “are some of the most vulnerable to these changes in the world.”
The crisis has a technical side that stakeholders often overlook. Civil engineers design more durable roads and bridges. Agricultural engineers develop land and water management practices that protect farmlands. Geotechnical experts analyse slope stability. Hydrologists model flood patterns. Environmental engineers assess risks to ecosystems and ensure sustainability.
But these professionals frequently find themselves excluded from decision-making. Instead of shaping the early stages of infrastructure development and policy, they are often asked to assess damage once it’s already done.
In headlines and numbers, we tend to forget the human cost aspect of such disasters. When a flood washes away farmland, it wipes out a family’s livelihood. An entire community loses access to schools, hospitals, and markets when a road collapses. When disasters disrupt hydropower, the national economy suffers.
In many remote areas, rebuilding takes months, at times years. Families live in temporary shelters while waiting for government relief. For those in high-risk zones, this cycle of displacement and uncertainty has become routine.
And many stories remain untold. Not every casualty is recorded. Not every damaged home is visited by officials.
So, What Needs to Change?
From a technological and availability perspective, Nepal is not lacking — having access to tools that can mitigate disaster risk, like GIS mapping, early warning systems, check dams, embankments, flood zoning, and slope stabilisation methods. Even in remote parts, locals carry traditional knowledge about managing monsoon risks, showing a foundational strength.
What’s missing is political will and long-term vision.
The disaster policies must shift from reactive to proactive. The government needs to involve engineers, scientists, and climate experts in planning from the start—not just called in for damage reports. Investments must go into resilience and redesigning to survive future monsoon seasons.
For the fiscal year 2025/26, the government has allocated approximately USD 40 million towards the reconstruction of irrigation systems in the areas affected by monsoon-related disasters and earthquakes. The allocation for rebuilding infrastructure like private houses, schools, public infrastructure, and archaeological and cultural heritage sites damaged by earthquakes and monsoon-related disasters stands at USD 132 million.
Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel expressed his plans to strengthen early warning systems and enhance the capacity of disaster response teams.
Likewise, the World Bank has approved a USD 150 million contingent financing instrument to support disaster response and resilience efforts in Nepal.
Although celebrating the monsoon is a cultural norm, slowly, it’s evolving into a seasonal fear. The season is an integrated part of life, but how much damage it causes is still in our hands. If we continue to ignore the pleas and expert advice, delay funding, and neglect early planning, the next flood won’t surprise us but will surely devastate us.
Hopefully, this year, the storms that have arrived before remind us not just of what we lost but of what we still have a chance to protect.
Sudipa Mahato is a junior editor with Nepal Connect.
