Flash floods have been tearing through Pakistan the last few weeks and it’s been a haunting reminder of the catastrophic 2022 floods that submerged a third of the country, claimed 1,700 lives and affected more than 33 million people.
With a population of 240 million, Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, facing unpredictable rainfall, frequent floods, and extreme heatwaves.
Experts think history may be repeating itself.
In the last three weeks, monsoon rainfall has been 82 percent higher than during the same period last July, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD).
Over the weekend alone, 63 people died in Punjab, pushing the national flood death toll — across Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the northwest, Sindh in the south and Balochistan in the southwest — to over 180 over three weeks, as per the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). More than 500 injuries have also been reported in rain-related accidents since early July.
In Punjab, rainfall was 124 percent above last year's levels, triggering sudden cloudbursts in cities like Rawalpindi and Lahore.
Climate change: the invisible accelerator
An analysis of 73 years and 1,015 flood events across the Hindu Kush–Himalayan region (covering Pakistan’s mountains) found that floods have become significantly more frequent and less predictable, especially since the early 2000s.
Importantly, many of these sudden events stem from glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and landslide-dammed lake outburst floods (LLOFs), both driven by warming temperatures and rapid glacier melting.
The Khyber Pakhtunkwa Disaster Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) had urgently warned in early July 2025 that rising temperatures, combined with heavy rains, were dramatically increasing the risk of GLOFs in vulnerable valleys. Over 7 million people in mountain regions like KP and Gilgit-Baltistan were advised to remain on high alert by the climate change ministry.
Meanwhile, rising atmospheric temperatures are causing monsoon systems to hold more moisture, leading to shorter, intensely heavy downpours, The Guardian reported, citing experts. This “climate whiplash” effect means floodwaters accumulate dangerously fast, often before early warning systems can activate.
New systems from the PMD warn of continuing heavy rain through July 25, with another monsoon wave expected around July 28, prolonging the threat. So Pakistan is still on high alert.
But experts say the suddenness and devastation of these floods are not just about climate dynamics: they’re also a product of systemic human failures.
“Monsoon rains were well forecasted in advance,” water expert Naseer Memon told TRT World. “These rains are above normal but not abnormally high, barring a few instances,” he added.
“The real issue is that our infrastructure in towns and cities can no longer handle the intensity of such rainfall. Roads and other obstructions are being built across natural waterways, and settlements, especially in Punjab, KP, and Sindh, are expanding in a disorganised way, often right on riverbanks, with no town planning or regulation.” Memon explained.
He added that population pressure is compounding the crisis: “Due to explosive population growth and a lack of rural facilities, people are migrating to urban peripheries. These new, unplanned settlements are incompatible with a changing climate.”
Memon noted that Pakistan must shift from trying to “control” floods to adapting and coexisting with them by respecting floodplains and restoring natural drainage paths.
“Floodplains are meant for water. Blocking and choking the riverbed causes raging floods,” he noted. “We’ve recklessly encroached upon these zones, and the consequences are now becoming furious and unmanageable.”
Without warning
Communities nationwide have had almost no time to prepare or evacuate.
In Gilgit-Baltistan — Pakistan’s mountainous region known for its snow-capped peaks and located over 1,200 meters above sea level — temperatures have soared to an unprecedented 48.5°C, as per another report in The Guardian.
This breaks the previous record of 47°C set in 1971. The region, which spans the Himalayas, Hindu Kush, and Karakoram ranges, has experienced a rapid increase in glacial melting over the last two weeks.
This accelerated melting has caused local rivers to swell and led to the formation of unstable glacial lakes. Several of these lakes have burst, triggering flash floods and landslides that have destroyed villages and roads, leaving some communities cut off from the outside world and without electricity or clean drinking water.
Hatam Ali, a local tour guide, told TRT World the region is facing a “very serious situation” and described the fast formation of volatile glacial lakes as “highly hostile” to people’s safety.
“I’m currently guiding a group near K2, at about 4,200 meters, so the internet is patchy, but I can tell you the situation in Saling, my home village in Khaplu, is bad,” he said.
Saling is a village in the Ghanche district of Gilgit‑Baltistan, located near Khaplu in the Karakoram mountain range.
“We were lucky there was no loss of life, but we’ve suffered major, sudden damage in the last few weeks alone”.
Ali told TRT World that river water overflowed and hit their farmland hard. The destruction came out of nowhere, he said. Large swathes of farmland were submerged, with crops and stockpiles washed away, also wiping away the livelihoods of the residents.
He said they must have lost hundreds of potatoes, wheat and other plants. Our animal shelters and cattle houses were also damaged, Ali lamented, adding that it is not just his family that has suffered huge losses from floods, but almost all other families in his neighbourhood have gone through a similar situation.
Gilgit-Baltistan is home to roughly 7,200 glaciers, many of which have shrunk in size due to the climate crisis. These glaciers are crucial to Pakistan’s water supply, feeding key river systems.
In Chakwal district, a salt range area of Punjab province, that is located about 300 kilometers from Lahore — the situation turned catastrophic late last week. The area received over 400mm of rain in just 24 hours, one of the heaviest downpours recorded this season, triggering flash floods that swept through villages with little warning.
In Nurpur, one of the hardest-hit villages in the district, Amjad, a local farmer, said his house collapsed under the pressure of the rain.
“The rain just wouldn’t stop. We didn’t have time to protect anything,” he said. “One moment we were trying to move some things off the floor, the next, a wall came down. We’re staying with relatives now, but we’ve lost almost everything.”
Like many rural families in Pakistan, Amjad said they were left with no warning and no real way to prepare.
The pattern and the warning
These events from June and July 2025 were not routine riverine floods. They were sudden, violent surges fueled by climate-change-amplified heatwaves and unstable glacial lakes. They gave communities little or no notice, with many losing everything in mere minutes.
This fits a broader trend of unpredictable, intensified monsoons and rapid glacial melting — the kind of extreme climate behaviour scientists have long forecast.
Pakistan’s experience underscores the urgent need for better early-warning systems that can detect volatile GLOFs and flash rainfall, resilient infrastructure, and fair climate finance.
