In a stunning display of nature's ability to ruin a perfectly good Wednesday, flash floods tore through Nepal's mountainous border region with Tibet, leaving roughly 160 people dead and hundreds more - including dozens of international tourists - missing. Social media was flooded (pun intended) with footage of people fleeing a wall of water that casually washed away buildings and vehicles, because why not?

Initial analysis of satellite imagery and reports from the Nepalese government points to a landslide triggered by a piece of glacier that fell hundreds of feet. As the region warms, its ice is becoming increasingly unstable, which is about as surprising as a snowman melting in July.

"The glaciers over there are definitely in retreat," said Joseph Shea, an associate professor of geography at the University of Northern British Columbia, with the understated tone of someone who's seen this coming for years. "There's a lot of glacier mass up there, but we're seeing thinning, we're seeing retreating."

Since 2000, the world's glaciers have lost 5 percent of their ice, but Nepal's glaciers have been overachievers, losing nearly a quarter of their area between 1970 and 2010. More than 160 smaller glaciers in the country have vanished entirely, apparently having taken early retirement.

A recent study finds that 40 percent of the world's glacial ice could disappear if we don't keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius. But who's counting? Apparently, the glaciers are, and they're not happy.

The impacts of warming on Nepal's glaciers can cause cascading effects. Shea noted that retreating glaciers can help trigger landslides as they shrink and can no longer hold back sediment. These retreating glaciers also leave behind large, dammed lakes at higher elevations. "If you have a landslide suddenly into a lake, you get an overtopping of the dam, and then the whole thing can collapse catastrophically," Shea said. Known as glacial lake outburst floods, two of these events hit Nepal last year, and research shows millions are living in harm's way around the world. Because, of course, they are.

Wednesday's disaster was more likely due to a glacial collapse that fell into the valley below. Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary, told The New York Times that satellite imagery suggested a 2,000-foot-wide piece of ice may have fallen almost 4,000 feet, "[pulverizing] the ice into water" with the force of its fall. Shugar emphasized it was too early to make conclusive statements, but he noted to Reuters that snow on the glacier earlier in the week may have melted due to warm temperatures. Because warm temperatures are a thing now.

The collapse and debris flow were so large and forceful that they registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Yes, the earth shook from a giant ice cube falling.

Glaciers elsewhere have also broken apart with destructive results, including a Swiss glacier collapse last year that buried a town, and a glacier collapse in Italy in 2022 that killed 11 mountaineers. Both were linked with rising temperatures. It's almost like there's a pattern here.

"It's summertime," Shea said. "There's lots of warming, lots of melt happening, lots of water around. There's also things like alpine permafrost thaws: the ground temperatures warm up, and big blocks and chunks that would have been frozen in place are now suddenly becoming mobile." So, in summary: warm world, falling ice, bad times. You're welcome.