Mumbai: The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) saw thunderstorms for the third consecutive day on Friday, with the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) weather station in Santacruz recording 13.3mm of rain in the eight hours ending 5:30 pm. The rains resulted in waterlogging and traffic snarls across MMR between 5 pm to 7 pm.
The thunderstorms are being brought about by the passage of an upper air cyclonic circulation which originated in the southwest Bay of Bengal around October 10 before moving west-north-west towards Maharashtra, officials explained.
Along with favourable wind patterns, there has been an increase in daytime temperatures this week. Coupled with the high level of humidity, this forms the perfect condition for convective activity, leading to the sudden formation of cumulonimbus clouds.
“This is why the skies were sunny around 2 pm, but then by around 4:30 pm it became very overcast,” said an official, IMD Mumbai.
Pune, Ahmednagar and Raigad districts saw thunderstorms on October 10, while interior Thane and Raigad, including Navi Mumbai, got thunderstorms on Oct 11 and 12. As was also the case in Mumbai on Thursday and Friday, these were accompanied by lightning strikes and short, but intense, spells of rain. Another surge in rainfall before the withdrawal of the monsoon was predicted last week.
“The monsoon may withdraw from Mumbai by October 15 or 16, but there may be some residual rains even after that,” said the IMD official. On Friday, the southwest monsoon withdrew from Nandurbar, Dhule and Jalgaon in northwest Madhya Maharashtra, signalling that it will also be exiting from the Konkan soon.
The thunderstorm led to inconveniences for passengers travelling to and from Mumbai airport, as a total of 8 flights were diverted away from CSMIA to other airports. According to the airport disruption index, CSMIA had a rating of 4.4 earlier today for the departure board indicating a high level of disruption, while arriving flights were less severely affected with 1.7 on the index. Airport authorities confirmed that there were 8 flights that were diverted away due to low visibility. Other than that, 250 departing flights were delayed with an average delay of 50 minutes.