A catastrophic landslide induced by intense rainfall occurred near Leh in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir in western Himalayas (34.09°N/77.34°E) around 0130 -0200 hours IST of 6 August, 2010.The region is a low rainfall zone on the leeward side of the Zanskar Range and is not known to experience weather event of this magnitude.Analysis of daily and monthly precipitation of Leh showed that July and August are the rainiest months.Also the analysis of annual extreme rainfall events shows that 40% of all the annual extreme events have occurred during the monsoon months of July, August and September.This analysis has established, contrary to the general belief, that southwest monsoon of India does not reach Ladakh.The two recent heavy rainfall events of 5 August, 2010 and 25 July, 2011 have been found to be associated with westward moving cyclonic circulations in middle troposphere (~ 500 hPa) over the Tibet-Ladakh region during active monsoon conditions suggesting that such systems are crucial to produce heavy to very heavy rains over this region.Also the effect of orographic features of the region, which generally are considered to act as obstruction to rainfall, has been discussed and shown that these features may, in fact, be enhancing the rainfall associated with westward moving cyclonic circulations in the middle troposphere embedded in large scale favorable environment.
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Bhan et al. (2015) studied this question.
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