E-Paper
Heavy rains lash Mahabaleshwar, water level at Koyna dam rising
Mahabaleshwar received 129 mm rainfall in the last 24 hours, while Koyna and Navaja dams received 74 mm and 118 mm respectively
After playing truant for over a month, rain returned to parts of Maharashtra including Pune, Satara and Kolhapur districts.
On the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, heavy rains lashed parts of popular hill station Mahabaleshwar and neighbouring areas of western Maharashtra and the Konkan region over the last 24 hours, as a result of which the water level of the Koyna dam is rising. The rains, intermittently, continued till Tuesday evening, said officials.
In view of the ongoing rains, two teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have been deployed in the Konkan region, Kolhapur, five teams positioned in Mumbai and another team sent to Nagpur.
“As per requisition, two teams of NDRF had been marched for deployment in Kolhapur today (Tuesday),” said Pavan Dev Gaur, deputy commandant, 5th NDRF Batalion, Pune.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has also issued a ‘yellow alert’ for Satara district, where Mahabaleshwar and the Koyna dam are located, forecasting heavy rains for the next two days at isolated places in some areas of the western ghats.
It has also issued an ‘orange alert’ for Friday, forecasting heavy to very heavy rains in isolated areas of the ghats.
The MeT department issues four colour-coded predictions based on the prevailing weather systems. The green colour indicates no warning, yellow is to keep a watch, orange is to stay alert, while red means a warning and that action needs to be taken.
An IMD official said there will be vigorous activity in four sub-divisions of the state
Anupam Kashyapi, head, weather forecasting department at IMD said, “Konkan-Goa and ghats of central Maharashtra are likely to get isolated extremely heavy rainfall (20.5 cm or more) in 24 hours.”
With the improvement in rain activity in the catchment areas of the Koyna dam, its water level is also steadily rising, according to the district disaster control cell.
“Mahabaleshwar received 129 mm rainfall in the last 24 hours, while the Koyna and Navaja dams received 74 mm and 118 mm rainfall, respectively, since Monday,” an official from the Satara district administration said.
He said that the total capacity of the Koyna dam is 105 TMC (thousand million cubic feet of water). With the rain activity increasing since last week, the dam water level is going up.
Till Tuesday morning, the dam had 16 TMC water, which is 15.20 per cent of the total capacity, he added.
