Pakistan is facing a wave of extreme weather, showing just how unpredictable its climate has become.

Imagine walking to your car after work and finding dents everywhere, broken side mirrors, broken back lights, a hole in the bumper and hits on the windscreen – this is what happened to several people in Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad earlier this week after an unexpected hail and thunderstorm hit the city.

As the capital reels from a violent hailstorm which left five dead, large parts of the country endure a prolonged heatwave, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has issued fresh warnings for more rain—and possibly another round of hailstorms in the days ahead.

‘Warning sirens’

On Tuesday, an intense and unexpected hailstorm hit Islamabad, Punjab province and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, causing death, widespread disruption and damage.

The storm, which lasted about 35 minutes, brought with it powerful winds and golf ball-sized hailstones. Vehicles were pelted, car windows shattered, and roads flooded.

Uprooted trees blocked roadways, and power outages hit several neighbourhoods after the Islamabad Electric Supply Company’s infrastructure took a direct hit from fallen poles and snapped wires. Some residents shared that they saw a lot of dead birds.

According to Dawn, public and private property in both provinces, including standing crops, were damaged.

Hasan Saeed, 25, said he has never seen anything like this before.

“It was freaky. Suddenly there was a cloud cover and for five to 10 minutes there was just hail. The temperature did not drop, and it was still hot. The hail kept hitting everything,” he told TRT World. “It was the scariest and weirdest weather pattern I have seen in my life,”

Saeed said that he knew another hailstorm was predicted and he was dreading it as he did not have a shed or any sort of cover for his cars.

On the other side of the country, temperatures have been soaring and life without an air conditioner is unbearable.

Sidra Ali, who lives by the sea in Karachi, said it was difficult to step out during the day for even regular chores. “I try to plan my day accordingly and do most of my errands in the evening when it is a little cooler. In the afternoon, I do not get out of the house as it is too hot without the AC,” she told TRT World.

According to former Climate Change minister, Senator Sherry Rehman, it is deeply alarming to witness a hailstorm and a heatwave in the same region within the same week.

“On one end, Islamabad was battered by an intense 35-minute hailstorm that shattered car windows, damaged solar panels, and triggered flash floods; on the other, a severe heatwave swept across Sindh, southern Punjab, and Balochistan, with temperatures soaring 6°C to 8°C above normal.

“Such extreme weather fluctuations are no longer anomalies — they are evidence of a climate system in breakdown,” she said.

“This year, Pakistan recorded the lowest Indus River flows in 100 years during the first quarter, and rainfall was 48 percent below normal across the country. These are not coincidences — they are warning sirens,” she added.

Faaiz Gilani, Climate Policy and Finance Expert at Oxford Policy Management, said: “Growing up, I fondly remember how the adults around me would make it a point to
remind me how Pakistan is a country blessed with all four seasons. Now, I joke that we
can witness summers and winters within the same week.”

He added that unpredictable weather is slowly becoming a commonality, this is solely because of climate change, and unless we get our act together to counter climate change, these unusual occurrences will become more frequent.

Fragmented response?

Rehman claimed that climate shocks are intensifying across Asia.

Looking at China, the senator said: “China’s recent orange wind alert — its most severe in a decade — grounded flights and left over 22 million people bracing for typhoon-like gusts. In Pakistan, however, the response to these cascading crises remains fragmented.”

“Our dams are drying up, our crops are withering, and yet climate adaptation remains an afterthought. Farmers are issued advisories but lack long-term support or training to cope with changing weather patterns. Policymakers cannot continue with business as usual, while Pakistan edges closer to a full-blown water emergency,” she added.

Rehman claimed that extreme weather events are undeniably becoming more frequent and intense in Pakistan, driven by the country’s deepening climate vulnerability and ecological imbalance.

“Despite contributing less than one percent to global greenhouse gas emissions, Pakistan ranks among the top five most climate-vulnerable countries, bearing the brunt of emissions from heavily polluting nations,” she said.

“Rising temperatures are not only reshaping weather patterns — with more intense heatwaves, floods, droughts, and hailstorms — but are also disrupting socioeconomic systems, impacting agriculture, water resources, and public health. The country is home to over 13,000 glaciers, the highest number outside the polar regions, with more than 3,000 glacial lakes formed due to accelerated melting. Alarmingly, 36 of these lakes are considered at risk of triggering Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs), threatening entire communities downstream,” she added.

Way forward?

According to the senator, adaptation must begin with people.

She explained that provinces have to mobilise their adaptive capacities, since they all have different exposure to climate challenges.

“Our mountain to delta topography makes local and provincial adaptation strategies key to building resilience for an overheated decade. Secondly, Pakistan’s frontline defence against climate extremes lies in protecting its most vulnerable,” she said.

To scale resilience, she explained, Pakistan must strengthen Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) systems to mobilise climate finance, and enable inter-provincial coordination across climate frontiers—addressing glacier melt, drought, flooding, and heatwaves through joint planning and action across provinces.

She stressed that it was important to focus on infrastructure transformation to build resilience.

On the other hand, Gilani said that first and foremost, early warning systems need to be installed that can notify the relevant authorities regarding any impending danger.

“Foresight is always better, and policymakers can move towards proactive planning rather than reactive,” he said. “The benefit of the former is that efforts are made to stop a disaster from happening, rather than acting after something bad happens. Work is being done in disaster risk management, disaster mitigation and climate adaptation, but there’s a long way to go.”

He added that to build resilience among the vulnerable, adaptive social protection needs to be pondered over as it helps build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households by investing in their capacity to cope with shocks.