Mumbai meets 87.6% of rain target

The city woke up to its third consecutive day of rainfall on Tuesday, recording 38

The city woke up to its third consecutive day of rainfall on Tuesday, recording 38.4mm of rain in the 24 hours ending 8.30am – down from 70.44mm of rain recorded in the 24 hours prior to it – and an additional 12.5mm of rain in the eight hours ending 5.30pm.

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With a marked decrease in the intensity of rainfall, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) downgraded its initial orange category storm warning to a yellow category alert for Friday. However, an orange category alert for Wednesday and Thursday remains in place.

The total rainfall for July now stands at 970.9mm, an excess of the 827-mm normal rainfall set by IMD. Mumbai has now received 1932.3mm (87.6%) of rainfall for the season that ends in September.

Officials said that with another two to three heavy spells of rain expected before month-end, the rainfall record for July may well cross the 2,000-mm mark. For comparison, last year July had recorded 1,469mm of rain.

An off shore monsoon trough near the Maharashtra coast is likely to remain vigorous for the next three to four days, and Mumbai will continue to see an active monsoon spell for the “next four-five days with heavy to very heavy rainfall at a few places and extremely heavy rainfall at isolated places,” the IMD said in a bulletin released Tuesday.

“A cyclonic circulation over south Gujarat and a low pressure area forming in the Bay of Bengal around July 23 will bring heavy rain to the Konkan coast in a few days,” said a spokesperson from IMD’s regional forecasting centre in Mumbai.