This article comes from a good friend Link, who has a powerful account of the recent freak cloudburst in Ladakh. Read the full story at What's With the Climate?
Leh Cloud-Burst: a First-Hand Account
By Linkesh Diwan (www.TaleOfGrace.com) (This article is licensed under Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution license.)
Midnight, August 6, 2010: "Link, wake up! Water is coming in from the roof!"
My mother and I were in Leh, Ladakh, staying at "Eco-Homestay," the house of Mr. Sonam Gyatso and family, in Lower Sankar. The house was made in a hybrid of traditional and modern construction techniques: the main hall in the house was concrete, while rooms surrounding it were made of sun-dried mud bricks, and roofed with Poplar beams, a mesh of willow branches, and a thick pad of fine clay-like mud. The house incorporated passive solar building techniques, such as a direct-gain room, and a Trombe wall, and had solar-powered lighting. It had been raining since evening, and by midnight the clay roof was saturated and began to leak….
Read the full story at What's With the Climate?