Glacier burst video from Alaska falsely viral as Nepal flash flood trigger

Following the devasting flash floods in Nepal on August 26, which claimed over 1,200 lives and caused massive destruction, a video has gone viral on social media, purporting to show the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) phenomenon. It displays footage from a search helicopter, ostensibly showing the breach of a glacial lake in China. Users on social media have widely shared the clip, claiming that this was the immediate trigger to the Nepal floods.

X user Bhavesh Mane (@iambmane) posted the clip on August 27, with the hashtag #NepalFloods. At the time of this article being written, the post garnered 2 million views, and was reshared close to 2,000 times. (Archive)

Also Read: Nepal floods: Unrelated videos of past disasters, AI visuals falsely viral

A journalist with Dainik Bhaskar, Ashish Rai (@journorai) also posted the clip on X, which received 2 million views and close to 4,000 reshares. (Archive) 

Several other X users, like former MLA Rajpal Singh Sekhawat (@Rajpal_BJP), Dr. Kiran J Patel (@kiranpatel1977), Pradhyumn Sharma (@pradhyu78651514), AH Siddiqui (@anwar0262) and (@greatandhranews) posted the clip with the same claim. (Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

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Fact Check

To check whether the claims surrounding this viral clip are authentic, we broke it down into keyframes, then ran reverse image searches on the keyframes. This led us to an Instagram reel, uploaded by an user with the handle (@helipilotleigh), on August 22. It contains the exact same footage as the viral clip.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Leigh Coates (@helipilotleigh)

In the caption, the user, whose name is Leigh Coates, explains what a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood, or GLOF is, and mentions that the video shows one happening over the Columbia Glacier in Alaska.

The description on her YouTube channel states that she is a helicopter pilot based in the United States, who specialises in ferry flights and advanced training for mountain flying, as well as airport landings.

We noticed that she had uploaded similar videos of glacial outbursts on her Instagram profile, and her YouTube channel.

In conclusion, the video that went viral recently in the context of the Nepal flash flood, showing a glacial outburst — purportedly in China — is actually from the Columbia Glacier in Alaska. It was uploaded by a helicopter pilot named Leigh Coates on her Instagram handle, a few days before the flash flood in Nepal. Thus, the claim that the phenomenon shown in this video was a direct trigger for the August 26 Nepal floods is false and misleading.