City registers highest ever 24-hour rain for April

Mumbai: In the early hours of Thursday, unseasonal rains, accompanied by lightning and thunder, made an appearance over several parts of the city, stemming the spike in mercury seen over the past week, in which the daily minimum temperature has remained above normal each day.

Thursday’s showers were reported only from the northern and western suburbs, including Borivali, Bhayandar, Malad, Goregaon, Andheri, Naigaon, Vasai, Juhu, Mira Road and a few others.

The city’s base weather station, in Santacruz, received 15mm of rain as of 8:30am Thursday, which is the most amount of rain received by Mumbai in 24 hours for the month of April on record, since the India Meteorological Department (IMD) started collecting data there in 1944.

“The previous record was around 7.2 or 7.4mm on April 22, 1974, at Santacruz,” said Sushma Nair, scientist with the IMD’s regional forecasting centre in Mumbai.

The rain brought down the morning’s minimum temperature to 22.2 degrees Celsius, down from 25.8 degrees Celsius a day prior, falling to below normal for the first time in at least 10 days. The showers were also accompanied by strong, gusty winds from the north-northwest direction at a speed of about 6.3km/hr. IMD’s coastal station in Colaba did not see any rainfall.

“There was a westerly trough in the upper levels bringing in the moisture from the Arabian Sea. When the winds blow over the land, which is of a high temperature, it creates the perfect situation for a convective thunderstorm. There is a chance of more light to moderate showers for Mumbai and other parts of the Konkan in coming days,” Nair added.

As per the IMD’s seven-day forecast for Santacruz, the city will see partly cloudy skies over the next week. Maximum temperature will hover between 34-35 degrees Celsius while the minimum temperature will remain between 24-25 degrees Celsius.