Even before the second wave reached this section of the Indus, floods covered much of the city of Khewali and the surrounding farmland. The flood-widened river is muddy and brown in the top image, and it impinges on the cement-gray town of Khewali.

As if constrained by a belt, the river is cinched near Khewali. The constraint is the Guddu Barrage, a barrier designed to channel irrigation water to farmland in the northern Sindh district. The “C”-shaped barrier that controls the shape of the flood in the top image is itself visible in the lower image. Canals extend away from the barrage on both sides of the river. A road runs along the canal, and it too appears to be flooded. Stream gauges at the Guddu Barrage recorded extremely high levels of water (more than 910,000 cubic feet per second) flowing down the Indus on August 12. The flow rate increased on August 13 as the second wave of flooding reached the barrage.