Weather bureau warns Mumbai of localised flooding today

MUMBAI: IMD officials on Sunday said that due to active monsoon conditions, the entire Konkan coast, including Mumbai, is experiencing an intense spell of rainfall.
“Monsoon remained widespread and active over the entire Konkan belt, including Mumbai, with heavy to very heavy rainfall over many places and isolated extremely heavy falls. Interior Maharashtra also received fairly widespread rainfall with mostly moderate rainfall.The intense rainfall activity is likely along the west coast (including Mumbai) and adjoining ghat areas of interior Maharashtra till July 5 and gradual reduction thereafter,” said the IMD.

Between July 4 and 5, the highest rain in the entire North Konkan region was reported in Thane at 377mm while parts of Navi Mumbai like Belapur, Nerul and Juinagar reported 226mm, 225mm and 221 mm of rainfall. Rainfall reported greater or equal to 204.5mm falls within IMD’s extremely heavy rain category.
The heavy downpour continued in parts of Mumbai’s suburbs and around the city on Sunday as well with the IMD Santacruz observatory reporting 103.9mm rainfall in the nine hours between 8.30am and 8.30pm. In parts of the island city there was only light rainfall recorded at 11.2mm.
In the city, the India Meteorological Department maintains historical data of extreme weather events at its Santacruz observatory, In its impact-based forecast issued for Monday the IMD said that this could lead to localised flooding and water-logging of low-lying areas and traffic may need to be regulated effectively. The city suburbs have so far reported 488.9mm rain (from July 1 to July 5), which is 58.1% of the month’s average rainfall (840.7mm). The city had recorded 395mm rain in the entire month of June, which was the lowest monthly rain in five years.
K S Hosalikar, deputy director-general (western region), IMD, said that weather models had already been indicating that heavy rain would continue on Sunday over the entire west coast including Mumbai.
“In the 24 hours ending on Sunday morning at 8.30am, Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai recorded extremely heavy rainfall. Heavy rainfall warnings for the entire Maharashtra coast are already in place by the IMD. The impact of three days of heavy rain reported over the weekend have been such that negative rain departures of June are now largely positive,” he said, indicating how total rain reported so far by the IMD Colaba observatory has been 915.6mm while atv the IMD Santacruz observatory it has been 780.1mm, which is 204.3mm and 99.5mm above normal.
The water stock in the lakes supplying water to the city was 1.15 lakh million litres (7.98%).