Clear skies, calm winds and a panoramic view of Himalayan peaks draped in snow – that is the autumn hikers on Mount Everest have come to love.<\/b><\/p>\n
But that seems to be changing.<\/p>\n
Meteorologists say monsoon now stretches into autumn, which is traditionally mountain tourism season. And during this delayed tail end of monsoon, they have recorded at least one episode of extreme rainfall almost every year for the past decade, with mountain weather becoming dangerous.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, a shock blizzard stranded hundreds of tourists near the eastern face of Everest for days in freezing temperatures at an altitude of more than 4,900m (16,000ft). <\/p>\n
Nearly 600 trekkers were guided to safety by the end of Tuesday, Chinese state media said. One person had died from hypothermia and altitude sickness, but the others were reportedly in good condition.<\/p>\n
This was on the Tibetan side but something similar had unfolded on the Nepal side, where a South Korean mountaineer died on Mera Peak. <\/p>\n
The world found out much later because communication lines were hit by torrential rains and heavy snowfall. Officials estimate that landslides and flash floods in the country have killed around 60 people over the past week.<\/p>\n
This is highly unusual for October “when we expect the skies to remain clear,” said Riten Jangbu Sherpa, a mountain guide, adding that trekkers have been increasingly caught in unexpected extreme weather in recent years.<\/p>\n
Given this is the favoured season, frequent storms like this have “hampered our trekking and mountaineering business,” he added.<\/p>\n
The monsoon season in northern India and Nepal usually lasts from June to mid- September, but not anymore. <\/p>\n
“Our data shows that most of the years in the past decade have had monsoons lasting until the second week of October, which is definitely a change,” said Archana Shrestha, deputy director general at Nepal’s department of hydrology and meteorology.<\/p>\n
More worrying is the heavy rain and snow the tail end of the season brings, like it did this time on 4 and 5 October – Ms Shreshtha described the pattern as “damaging precipitation in a short span of time”. <\/p>\n
High in the Himalayas, such extreme weather means blizzards and snowstorms, which is a huge risk for trekking, mountaineering and tourism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clear skies, calm winds and a panoramic view of Himalayan peaks draped in snow – that is the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-492401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115358655094470111","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}