(note: Pakistan had record floods over the Summer, and an article in Scientific American gives us a clue about why this happened. We provide excerpts from the article here. Check out the accompanying maps from The Magnetometer Chain based in Alaska and the Jet Stream analysis for that time period, which we put here for your inspection.)
What Caused the Massive Flooding in Pakistan?
“The northern section of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa usually sees scattered rains during the monsoon season, but never the deluge it had this year. The inundation even spread as far north as Gilgit and Skardu in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, a mountainous region that had never seen the monsoons.”
"Never before have the monsoons gone that far north," said Abdul Qadir, an environment and energy expert at the U.N. Development Programme who is now leading flood recovery efforts in Gilgit. "I think this was the first time in recorded history that there was so much rain in the high alpine areas, and that really basically created these flash floods."
“As the monsoons were headed for Pakistan's northwest, from July 25 to Aug. 5 a portion of the jet stream was forced farther south than usual for this time of year by a system of blocking air that mysteriously developed over western China. This buckling of the jet stream dragged with it a wave of low pressure from the west, a system PMD calls the "westerly wave." “
“This westerly wave low-pressure area collects moisture from the Mediterranean Sea and is responsible for the snows that fall in the Karakoram Mountains. But it usually only comes that far south in the winter months -- in the summer, the normal pattern is for the westerly wave to track north of Afghanistan and miss Pakistan completely.”
But because of the blockage of the jet stream's normal course, the westerly wave followed its winter trajectory in late July and early August instead, meeting the monsoon system at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The cause of this blocking system in western China remains a mystery.
(Below: HAARP activity during the time period)
