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Mumbai rain cross season’s average with two months of monsoon left
The southwest monsoon spans across four months over Mumbai from June to September. But this year, it has already exceeded the city’s average seasonal rainfall on the back of persistent, heavy rain.
In just the first two months and four days this monsoon, Mumbai has already received its entire seasonal average rainfall.
The southwest monsoon spans across four months for Mumbai from June to September, which means excess rainfall will continue for the remainder of the season.
The Mumbai suburbs weather observatory recorded 204 mm (very heavy) rain over 24 hours (8.30am Saturday to 8.30am Sunday) taking the tally for the season to 2,374.2 mm against the seasonal average of 2,317.2mm.
Last monsoon, Mumbai recorded 2,239.6mm rain over four months, which was 77.6mm less than the season’s average. In 2017, the city had recorded 3,029.9mm rain, highest in six years.
Over the last 48 hours, Mumbai received 337.9 mm rain which took it past the annual average. Earlier this season, two spells of extremely heavy rain days - July 1 and 2 when 375.2mm was recorded in 24 hours and 219.2mm from July 26 to July 27 - were ‘extreme rainfall’ events that took the record past the season’s average.
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Persistent widespread intense rain continued from Saturday night through to Sunday morning with isolated areas in Mumbai recording ‘extremely heavy’ showers. More rain was recorded in the suburbs and neighbouring parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) such as Thane, Kalyan, Badlapur, Navi Mumbai, Ulhasnagar while the intensity was much lesser in south Mumbai.
Between 8.30am Saturday and 8.30am Sunday, south Mumbai recorded 142mm rain while areas like Matheran recorded 440 mm, Alibag 411mm, Thane 342mm, Ratnagiri 154mm, and Bulsar 178 mm.
The weather bureau categorises rainfall above 204.5mm in a 24-hour period as “extremely heavy” while 15.6mm to 64.4mm of rain is considered ‘moderate’, 64.5mm to 115.5mm ‘heavy’, and 115.6mm to 204.4mm ‘very heavy’.
The weather bureau said intense rain activity was likely to continue through Sunday. “Rainfall varied across south Mumbai with most areas receiving 100 mm while parts of the suburbs recorded over 250 mm. Strong westerly winds and heavy showers will continue on Sunday under the influence of weather systems being activated along the west coast due to a low pressure formation over northwest Bay of Bengal,” said KS Hosalikar, deputy director general, western region, India Meteorological Department (IMD).
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“Owing to the severity of the current weather, more than 4.5m high tide, and overflow from the Mithi River, citizens are requested to avoid going out as far as possible.”
Private weather forecasting agency Skymet said non-continuous showers were expected through Sunday and rain intensity would reduce from Monday. “Rain bearing weather systems are likely to die down by Sunday evening resulting in reduced rain activity from Monday onwards up till August 9 for Mumbai as the monsoon conditions will shift to south Konkan and interior Maharashtra,” said Mahesh Palawat, vice president (meteorology and climate change), Skymet.
