PICS: NAVIN SINGH KHADKA

SNOWED UNDER: Namche Bajar last week under a metre of snow

If there is all this global warming how come it snowed so much this spring?

That is what trekkers and Sherpas in Khumbu were asking last week as an unprecedented and unseasonal blizzard dumped heavy snow at the tail end of a bone-dry winter. Meterologists explain it is not so much climate change but climate variability associated with the greenhouse effect.

No one we spoke to in Khumbu last week could remember a winter like this without snow, or a spring with so much. "This is something we never saw and heard about," said 80-year-old Jangbu Sherpa, at Namche Bajar. "It's quite ominous."

The freak storm hit the region on 10 March, blowing and snowing for two full days. Nearly a meter of snow fell on Tengboche and up the Imja Valley. Many trekkers were unprepared and were stranded. "The guidebooks I referred to did not have any information about snowfall in this season," said Sarah Topping, from London.

Some farmers were happy because it meant an end to a long drought. "The fields were drying up," said Sarki Maya Tamang, a seasonal farmer in Lukla. "Now that it has snowed, we can sow barley once it melts."

Chomolungma and Lhotse soar above an unusually white spring at Tengboche Monastery.

But others were full of questions. "First, we did not get snow throughout the winter and now we are getting to see snow fall during the spring, this is quite puzzling for all of us, god knows what disaster we will face next," said Jangbu.

Phurba Gyalgin, at Monjo, is also worried. "It did not snow when it should have and now when there should have been plenty of sunshine we get hit by the freak snowstorm, something is not right."

Many such observations have been forwarded to conservation organisations working in the region, such as the World Wildlife Fund. "We noticed that it had snowed unusually and unexpectedly for three days last spring as well," said WWF Climate Change Officer Chamling Rai.

The Italian research group that goes by the acronym EV-K2-CNR recently installed a weather station below Chomolungma at 5,079 m to monitor climate variability.

Officials at the Department of Hydrology and Metrology in Kathmandu caution against jumping to hasty conclusions. "Just because it did not snow for one season or it snowed in spring doesn't indicate climate change," said Senior Divisional Meteorologist Sarju Baidya.

The department's explanation is that this winter's westerly disturbances were deflected by atmospheric pressure. "The westerlies all veered off into Tibet, which is why there was no precipitation this winter," explains Baidya.

While that may explain the barren winter, it offers no insight into what the Sherpas of Khumbu can expect next.