Planet makes available select imagery for major disaster events, including major earthquakes, floods, storms, wildfires, and human-made disasters. These are available here in a STAC Catalog under a CC-BY-NC license. See the Planet Disaster Data page for more information.
Planet satellite imagery of the 26 August 2026 outburst flood on the Bhote Koshi–Trishuli river corridor, published as a self-contained STAC catalog.
On 26 August 2026, an outburst flood swept the Bhote Koshi–Trishuli river corridor across the Nepal–China border, killing at least 160 people and leaving hundreds missing, including tourists and workers. Nepal Police reported at least 157 deaths, while Chinese state media reported three deaths and 265 people missing in Gyirong County, Tibet Autonomous Region. Preliminary expert assessment attributes the trigger to an ice and rock avalanche from a glacier in the upper catchment; the cause remains under investigation, and all casualty figures are provisional as of 26 August 2026 and were still rising at time of release.
16 scenes from two sensors in three collections, split by the 26 August 2026 event date.
Pre-event is a single north–south PlanetScope strip (satellite 254a) running from Trishuli
Bazaar (Bidur) north through Betrawati, Dhunche and Syabrubesi to the Rasuwagadhi border
crossing and on into Gyirong County, Tibet. Acquired three months before the flood, at the end
of the dry season.
Post-event PlanetScope is two adjacent swaths acquired the morning of the flood — a western
swath (255f) at 05:01 UTC and an eastern swath (251f) at 05:45 UTC. Together they span a
wider corridor than the baseline, reaching further west and east toward the Langtang valley.
Post-event SkySat is two collects acquired the following morning, about a day after the
flood: ..._u0001 over the Rasuwagadhi border crossing and ..._u0002 over Syabrubesi and the
upper Trishuli. At roughly 0.8 m these resolve individual buildings, bridges and road sections,
and are the sharpest imagery in this catalog by a factor of nearly five.
Cloud cover is significant throughout, and differs by sensor.
This is monsoon season in the Nepal Himalaya. Check eo:cloud_cover on each item and consult
the mask asset before drawing conclusions. Note that the reported clear fractions understate
usable ground somewhat: much of the loss is thin haze, through which terrain often remains
interpretable, rather than opaque cloud. The least obscured scenes are
20260527_053226_41_254a (5% cloud, pre-event), 20260826_050125_99_255f (14% clear,
post-event PlanetScope) and the eastern SkySat collect 20260827_020055_ssc1_u0001.
Pre- and post-event PlanetScope analytic products are not the same processing level.
Pre-event carries analytic_sr (surface reflectance); post-event carries analytic
(top-of-atmosphere radiance). Planet had not yet published surface-reflectance products for
the post-event scenes when this catalog was assembled, hours after acquisition. Do not
difference pre- and post-event analytic bands without applying an atmospheric correction
first. The visual assets are directly comparable.
Most PlanetScope scenes carry quality_category: test. 13 of the 14 PlanetScope scenes are
flagged test rather than standard in Planet's Data API, meaning they did not meet standard
quality criteria. Only 20260527_053217_72_254a is standard. Both SkySat collects are
standard.
Footprints do not fully coincide. The post-event PlanetScope swaths extend further west and east than the pre-event strip, so some post-event area has no matching baseline. The SkySat collects cover only two focal points within the corridor, not its full length.
Mask assets differ by bundle. PlanetScope scenes carry udm2 (Usable Data Mask 2, with
cloud/shadow/haze/snow classes and confidence). The SkySat pansharpened bundle ships udm, the
older single-band unusable-data mask.
Each collection also carries items.parquet, a STAC GeoParquet index of its items; each phase
carries an aggregate items.parquet across its collections.
Planet Crisis Response imagery, licensed CC-BY-NC-4.0 — attribution required, non-commercial use only.
Imagery © Planet Labs PBC, made available through the Planet Crisis Response Program.
Part of the Planet disaster data collection on Source Cooperative.