'Like a bomb exploded': How a 2000-ft wide glacier triggered deadly Nepal floods

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake was recorded in the region early WednesdayThe deadly flash floods that tore through Nepal’s Himalayan border region on Wednesday may have been triggered by a massive chunk of glacier breaking away high in the mountains and crashing into a river valley below. An initial analysis by geologists and glaciologists cited by The New York Times suggests the event was an ice avalanche — a sudden collapse in which a huge mass of ice falls from a glacier, generating a powerful surge of water, ice and debris.Satellite imagery indicates that a section of glacier about 2,000 feet wide snapped off almost cleanly and fell from an altitude of around 17,000 feet, according to Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary who studied the images. The block dropped nearly 4