Heavy rains have resulted in severe flooding and landslides in Nepal and India’s eastern Himalayan city of Darjeeling in the past few days.Dozens of people have been killed in landslides in Nepal’s eastern hilly district of Ilam, which borders India. Local media reported that 41 families have been displaced in Nepal.However, the government of Nepal’s interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki was praised for its response to the floods. Experts credited it with keeping deaths and destruction to a minimum.Here is what we know.How much rain has Nepal had?Heavy downpours began on October 3, and data from the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) show that some parts of Nepal experienced heavy rainfall. While the overall rainfall was slightly lower than last year, the destruction has still been bad because of “ultra-localised” heavy rains.Pawan Bhattarai, an assistant professor at the civil engineering department of Kathmandu-based Tribhuvan University, told Al Jazeera that several districts in the central-eastern Terai plains and eastern hills bore the brunt of the storm, with weather stations in Rautahat and Ilam recording more than 330mm and 300mm of rain, respectively, on Saturday and Sunday.Rainfall is normally considered extremely heavy if there is more than 150mm in 24 hours.In the capital, Kathmandu, some districts received slightly more than 145mm of rain on Sunday compared with roughly 240mm in late September last year, when Kathmandu Valley experienced its heaviest deluge since 2002. Some parts of Kathmandu recorded as much as 322.2mm of rain last year, when the floods killed more than 200 people. (Al Jaze …
