Mumbai receives July’s second-heaviest rainfall in 10 years

The city received 253.3mm of rainfall in the 24 hours ending 8.30am on Friday, according to the automatic weather station in Santacruz -- which is taken as representative of the entire city. This marks the heaviest shower of the season so far, and the second-largest quantum of daily rainfall in July in at least the last 10 years. The city had recorded 375.2mm of rain on July 2, 2019, as per India Meteorological Department (IMD) data.

However, IMD’s Regional Meteorological Centre’s archives indicate that Friday morning’s shower was the highest quantum of daily rainfall received in July in 14 years, since 2007 -- when the city got 256.6mm of rain in 24 hours on July 8. IMD officials later confirmed to Hindustan Times that this was an erroneous entry.

With seasonal rainfall of 1,545.2mm, the city has now surpassed the normal rainfall amount for the month, which is 1,332.5mm. In the past week alone, the city has recorded 435mm of rainfall.

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Waterlogging was reported in many western suburbs, particularly around Santacruz. Independent meteorologists predict that there will be more rain for both western and northern suburbs in the next couple of hours. In Colaba, on the other hand, only 13mm of rain was received, marking one of the largest spatial discrepancies over the 25km difference between the two observatories.

“Early morning small vortex of massive thundercells poured extreme heavy rains over Western & Northern suburbs where as Colaba got only light rains,” tweeted popular independent meteorologist (@IndiaWeatherMan) on Friday morning, later adding that the “worst” of heavy rains for Mumbai are over. “Cloud structure formed over Mumbai in the last 3 to 4 hours. Such things are near impossible to predict,” said another popular independent forecaster, Weatherman of Mumbai.

“There are two components in forecasting. Intensity and distribution. We predicted the distribution of rainfall correctly, but the intensity, which was confined to the western suburbs, could not be predicted given that the cloud cover formed extremely quickly, during the early hours. For the remainder of the day, moderate to heavy showers are possible till evening,” said Jayanta Sarkar, head of the Regional Meteorological Centre in Mumbai.