Nepal is now facing its fourth consecutive rainless winter. Winter precipitation has failed since 2022, and the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology’s latest seasonal forecast confirms that rainfall from December 2025 to February 2026 will once again be below normal, with some places receiving no rainfall. This is no longer a temporary anomaly; it is a clear warning of a deepening systemic shift.

Though the winter rain provides only a fifth of the annual water budget, the most immediate impact of dry winters has been on crops like wheat, barley, lentils, mustard, vegetables and fodder, which directly affect food security and dairy production. Dry forest floors are prone to wildfires. However, the not-so-obvious consequences are far more severe. Continued dry winters are drastically reducing snowpack in the high mountains, reducing meltwater flows next spring and summer—water that feeds our rivers during the driest period, which, in turn, powers our hydropower plants, irrigates our fields and augments groundwater in the Tarai.

Converging stressors

Although the combined impact of erratic monsoons followed by near-total dry winters on the local hydrology is still a matter of study in Nepal’s context, the ongoing water emergency in Iran, which hit headlines in recent weeks, indicates how vulnerable water resources are to mismanagement and how that fragility is now superimposed on climate-driven precipitation anomalies.

Iran’s water crisis offers an excellent mirror for us. Winter rains delivered by western disturbances in Iran, similar to ours, have failed for the last six years. Consequently, the country’s reservoirs hover critically low or are completely empty now, rivers run dry, and the groundwater table is sinking. Prior to this, excessive damming, prolonged droughts and unsustainable irrigation practices had already drained even the once largest lake, Lake Urmia, which lost over 90 percent of its water since the 1970s. Experts describe the country as facing “water bankruptcy,” with the government floating ideas to relocate people from its cities.

This ecological disaster stands as an unmistakable reminder of the devastating consequences of ignoring decades-long changes in local hydrology in a rapidly warming world. If similar conditions strike other nations dependent on similar weather systems, the result will be mass displacement on a scale few are prepared to confront.

Nepal remains in the clear at present because monsoons dominate the water budget; however, the same ingredients are in place. Rapid warming at twice the global average in the Himalayas, erratic monsoons and four consecutive (possibly more) dry winters, over-extraction of groundwater both in the valleys and the Tarai, deep boring in the hills, and trans basin water transfers have altered the water regime as we knew it. The majority of mountain springs have vanished, taking with them countless streams and rivulets. Groundwater levels in the Tarai continue dropping relentlessly. We bore witness to the human cost in 2025 when the monsoon arrived six weeks late: Millions faced acute water shortages and delayed paddy plantation. No longer anomalies, delayed monsoons are the new normal. It won’t be a surprise if 2026 brings the same or perhaps even worse.

Recharging groundwater in the Tarai or reviving mountain springs may still sound technically possible, with small-scale past successes often cited as proof. But those pilots worked under a more reliable climate: Timely monsoons, winters that delivered snowpacks, topography that hadn’t yet been fragmented by roads, settlements, infrastructures and aquifers not squeezed by earthquakes. Today, with monsoons growing erratic, winters increasingly dry and the landscape irreversibly altered, the same techniques that succeeded on a few hectares will fail at scale, if not planned well.

Autonomous adaptation

Ordinarily, nature is remarkably resilient and absorbs shocks to recover, often within a reasonable period. A deforested hillside, for instance, can return to lush forest in a matter of years if replanted and protected, albeit not with the same ecological make-up as the original. But water, being abiotic, responds to shocks in a relatively straightforward manner, lacking the complex gene-based resilience of living systems, with a limited ability to bounce back. The local processes that sustained water for millennia depend on subtle, interconnected systems are poorly understood even by experts. Once it crosses a critical threshold—when springs dry up permanently, aquifers drop below the recovery depth and monsoons become erratic, and winter rains begin to fail—restoration through one-time, simple means becomes all but impossible.

When water finally drops below the minimum needed for basic household use, people do what logic dictates: They leave. Thousands have already abandoned the rural hills after local springs and streams dried up. Unless a state-led, highly prioritised mass campaign is in place to restore lost water sources for at least a decade, we are on the exact trajectory that has brought Iran to its knees; Nepal, too, faces chronic scarcity or permanent loss, the quiet abandonment of villages and millions struggling to find water between monsoons.

Furthermore, the warning signs paint a more alarming picture of the climate-induced threats ahead, which are compounded by the now-implicit dearth of meaningful global efforts to mitigate them. CoP30 revealed that major emitters remain unwilling to phase out fossil fuels fast enough to keep warming within the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit. Meanwhile, a recent World Bank report has emphasised resilience and adaptation over mitigation—the urgent demand of the Global South, which has already suffered devastating losses of lives, homes and infrastructure. In addition to the seasonal weather forecast confirming yet another winter of below-normal rainfall, these warnings call for some concerted soul-searching to truly grasp the depth of the impending crisis and to rapidly enhance our capacity to adapt at scale.

Without urgent, large-scale adaptation measures which include watershed restoration, massive groundwater recharge programmes and an all-out effort on demand management, the current dry winters and erratic monsoons may soon evolve from an agricultural inconvenience into a national emergency.

Silver lining

Some positive signs of progress in addressing water problems are emerging at the local level. Dhangadi Municipality has constructed large, multipurpose ponds that simultaneously recharge groundwater, support fish farming and provide recreational spaces—the latter being incentives to dig large ponds. Other municipalities in the Tarai should follow suit and scale up similar initiatives without delay. But the crisis isn’t confined to the plains. In the hills and mountains, where big ponds are rarely feasible, the disappearance of springs and streams is just as severe. There, the only practical path forward is to build tens of thousands of small, strategically placed ponds across every watershed. These simple, low-cost and community-managed structures are often the only way to avoid impending water crises amid changing precipitation scenarios and coax depleted springs back to life. In essence, while the Tarai needs large-scale solutions like Dhangadi’s, the hills need a dense network of small ones. Both are urgent, and both demand immediate action.