WBCS Preliminary Examination 2023 — General Studies · Question 67 of 200

Answer: (C) Cloud bursts

Ladakh is a cold desert in the rain shadow of the Himalaya with less than 10 cm of rain a year, so its mud-built houses and loose slopes cannot withstand sudden downpours. A cloudburst, defined by the IMD as rainfall of over 10 cm in an hour over a small area, triggers flash floods and mudflows; the Leh cloudburst of 5–6 August 2010 killed over 200 people. Frontal rain belongs to temperate cyclones, convectional rain to hot equatorial regions, and hailstorms damage crops rather than cause mass deaths.