Season’s highest tide coming: Stay off Mumbai’s beaches today

Mumbai will witness one of the season’s highest tide days on Monday, with the water rising to 4.96 metres

With Monday set to record one of the highest tide days of the season at 4.96 metres, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has alerted citizens to not venture into the sea water.

People enjoy as waves crash onto the promenade at Worli Sea Face during high tide on Sunday. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

The sea level is above 4.5 metres is defined as high tide. Various agencies, such as the traffic police, Mumbai police, Railways and MMRDA, have been asked to be on their toes as the chances of severe flooding increase if it rains heavily.

BMC on Saturday reached out to citizens through Twitter and alerted them about retreating high tides in the next six days.

To prevent flooding in low-lying areas during high tide coupled with heavy rainfall, BMC regulates the stormwater flowing into the sea.

To improve safety at its six beaches — Dadar, Juhu, Girgaum, Versova, Aksa and Gorai — the BMC has installed manual sirens, public address systems, lifeguard watch towers for a better visibility. Until now, it had installed the warning signboards at beaches to people from swimming at dangerous spots.

“The civic body has also deployed 36 equipped major lifeguards on the Juhu, Girgaum, Versova, Aksa and Gorai” read the BMC tweet.

BMC had listed 24 high tide days for this season; of them eight are yet to occur. Three high tide days are scheduled to hit the shore and another five in September.

For the first time, BMC also released a list of seven neap tide days (when the difference between low and high tides is not much and the discharge of stormwater into the sea is very slow). It has listed these days to avoid waterlogging. The remaining neap tide days are on August 19 and 20, and September 17, 18 and 19.