‘Red alert’ sounded in city; schools, colleges to remain shut

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Wednesday night sounded a ‘red alert’ in the city, indicating ‘extremely heavy’ rain until 8.30am the next day. Minutes later, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) declared the closure of all schools and colleges on Thursday.

“Considering the safety of students, municipal commissioner and administrator Iqbal Singh Chahal has declared a holiday for all municipal, government and private primary, secondary and higher secondary schools and all colleges in the city and suburbs on Thursday,” a statement from BMC said.

The BMC also advised citizens to step out of their homes only if necessary. “In case of emergency, people should not panic and dial the helpline number 1916.” All assistant commissioners and their teams along with NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) personnel had been asked to be at disaster-prone spots and near dangerous buildings, the statement added.

While the University of Mumbai postponed 15 exams scheduled for Thursday, the education department of the Thane Municipal Corporation announced a holiday for Class 1 to 12.

The city and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region were initially placed on an ‘orange’ alert for Thursday. But seeing the continuous, widespread rain on Wednesday, IMD reviewed the situation at 8pm and upgraded Mumbai to a red alert till 8.30am on Thursday.

In the 24 hours ending at 8.30am on Wednesday, IMD’s weather station at Santacruz recorded 86mm of rain while the Colaba observatory recorded 45mm of rainfall. From 8 am to 10 pm, the city received an average rainfall of 101.35mm while the eastern suburbs saw 87.54mm and the western suburbs 102.55mm.

Due to waterlogging, Andheri Subway was shut at 3.30pm and traffic was diverted from Veera Desai Road. People also complained of waterlogging near Don Bosco College in Kurla and in parts of Sion.

The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport said that buses to Veera Desai in Andheri, Aarey Colony unit number 7, and LBS road, Kamani, were diverted due to flooding.

“A well-marked low-pressure area is over the north coast of Andhra Pradesh. That will pull the winds from the Arabia Sea leading to intense rains over the west coast of the country, right from the north coast of Goa to Karnataka,” Mahesh Palawat, vice president at Skymet Weather, said.

As a result, Mumbai and coastal areas of Maharashtra may experience moderate to heavy showers with short breaks in between for the next two days, he said. “Thereafter, the intensity of the rains will go down, but the weather won’t go completely dry. On and off rains will continue till the end of July.”

On Tuesday, Santacruz weather station broke its all-time record for July, bringing back the memory of the 2005 deluge.

“The previous wettest July was in 2020 when there was 1,502mm of rain. This month, we have 1,557.8mm of rain already, which is 67% of the seasonal normal. On July 26, 2005, the city did receive an unprecedented 944mm of rain in a day, but the monthly rainfall was only 1,454.4mm,” Sushma Nair, meteorologist with IMD’s regional centre in Mumbai, said.

Lakes overflow

After the Tulsi lake, the Tansa and Vihar lakes breached their capacity on Wednesday. The Vihar lake, located in Sanjay Gandhi National Park, started to overflow at 12.48 pm due to continuous heavy rainfall in catchment areas. This was followed by the Tansa lake at 4:35am.