Widespread Flooding Ravages Punjab and Beyond in Pakistan's Worst Summer in Decades

Madeeha Bawar Ali sat quietly, tearful, atop her neighbor’s roof as onlookers surveyed the unprecedented flood damage that has struck their city—an event unseen here in nearly four decades.

“We built our home with our own hands, and now it’s all gone,” Ms. Ali, 25, shared while her husband and two young sons, ages 2 and 6, ate a modest meal of lentils in silence. Nearby, a fan, television, and a few other salvaged possessions were packed into metal containers—a lifetime of belongings now stranded on a rooftop battered by relentless rains that caused deadly floods to engulf vast parts of Punjab.

These Punjab floods represent the latest calamity in a series of severe weather events devastating Pakistan this year, a nation of 250 million. Overflowing rivers have isolated villages, urban centers like Karachi have been submerged under waist-deep waters, and sudden glacial bursts in the northern mountains have obliterated entire communities.

“We are witnessing multiple extreme weather phenomena simultaneously—urban flooding, cloudbursts, glacial surges, and now widespread flooding in Punjab,” said Umair Afzal, deputy hydrology manager at Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Agency. “The scale of this is overwhelming.”