No heavy rainfall in city today, says IMD

Mumbai's IMD upgraded its alert to yellow due to expected moderate to heavy rainfall, following a brief ‘green’ alert, as thunderstorms approach.

Mumbai: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) placed the city under a ‘green’ alert on Thursday indicating no heavy rainfall. It upgraded its alert to yellow for Mumbai on Friday afternoon due to strong westerlies. “Mumbai is on yellow alert due to strong westerlies, and we expect the intensity of rain to be in the moderate to heavy category,” said Sunil Kamble, head, IMD Mumbai.

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In a press note dated September 25, IMD had announced an increase in rainfall and thunderstorm activity over parts of Maharashtra during the next 2-3 days. According to IMD classification, moderate rain is between 15.6mm and 64.4mm, while a downpour of 64.5mm - 115.5mm falls under the heavy category.

Mumbai saw slight rainfall scattered across the day on Friday, registering 26.43mm in the city, 22.95mm in the Eastern suburbs and 23.99mm in the Western suburbs between 8am to 6pm. The IMD’s observatory in Colaba recorded 17.8mm and Santacruz recorded 17.4mm in the same time period.

“Due to the presence of troughs from lower level to mid-levels over the North Konkan region, the convective thunderstorm activity associated with heavy rainfall is expected to increase over parts of Maharashtra during next two days. Widespread rainfall activity with heavy (64.5-115.5 mm) to very heavy (115.6-204.4 mm) with isolated extremely heavy rainfall (>= 204.5 mm) rainfall is expected over Mumbai and some parts of Konkan, Madhya Maharashtra and Marathwada during the above period. Thunderstorms accompanied with lightning, gusty winds reaching 40-50 kmph are also expected over the region during the above period,” read the bulletin.

IMD had placed Mumbai under a ‘red’ alert on Wednesday, the city recorded an average rainfall of 257mm in 24 hours, surpassing the threshold for extreme rainfall, and resulting in waterlogging in several parts of the city. The onslaught of heavy rains resulted in one fatality in a stormwater drain (SWD) incident, along with injuries caused by landslides and house collapses, tree falls and short circuits.

However, during daylight hours of Thursday, under the orange alert, it saw only smatterings of rain across the city between 8am to 8pm, with no part recording over 20mm of rain. The downpour picked up from 7pm not reaching the intensity of the previous night.