A video purportedly showing a massive glacial flood in Nepal amid the devastating floods along the Nepal-Tibet border is being widely circulated on social media.
The video shows torrents of muddy water rushing through a glacier, carrying chunks of ice and carving deep channels through the frozen landscape.
Several social media users shared the footage while claiming that it showed a Chinese helicopter capturing the spot from where the recent deluge entered Nepal and Tibet. The posts attempted to link the footage to the deadly floods reported along the border on August 26.
Similar posts can be seen here. (Archive)
NM VERIFIED
NewsMobile verified the claim and found that it is misleading.
The NM team initiated its verification by running the video through a reverse image search. Keyframes extracted from the viral footage led to an earlier version of the same video shared online by American pilot and content creator Leigh Coates.
The footage was originally published by Coates on YouTube in January 2025 and was later posted on her Instagram account on August 22, 2026, just days before the Nepal-Tibet floods. The original post identifies the location as Columbia Glacier in Alaska and explains that the footage captures a Jökulhlaup, also known as a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF).
A GLOF occurs when water trapped by glacial ice suddenly escapes, often after pressure causes an ice dam to fracture or a pathway to open beneath the glacier. The released water can move rapidly through the glacier, producing the powerful flow visible in the video.
Further verification found that the visuals in the original Instagram post correspond exactly with those in the viral footage. The original post does not mention Nepal, Tibet, or China.
Coates also directly responded to a user who asked whether the footage was connected to the Nepal-Tibet floods. She clarified that the footage was from Alaska.
Therefore, the viral video does show a real glacial outburst, but it was not filmed in Nepal or Tibet. The footage is from Columbia Glacier in Alaska and has been falsely linked to the recent floods.
