Uttarakhand, the mountainous northern state that hosts Dharali, has been devastated by cloudbursts before. A June 2013 cloudburst killed over 6,000 people in Uttarakhand and surrounding states, becoming the country's worst natural disaster in ten years. In 2021, flash flooding triggered by a cloudburst killed over 200.

Rescuers are scouring a devastated Himalayan village in northern India's Uttarakhand state to find missing people, a day after flash floods killed at least four and left many others trapped under debris.