Monsoon mayhem in Mumbai: 268mm rain recorded in 24 hours, second highest in decade

MUMBAI: The week began for Mumbai with extremely heavy rains being recorded in a 24 hour period ending 8.30am on July 8, Monday.
While there was only a yellow alert in place by India Meteorological department (IMD) indicating heavy rain activity at isolated places for 24 hours but Mumbai got an intense downpour in a three hour span.
An IMD official said that this was due to an offshore trough which strengthened toward midnight at 12.30am (July 8) bringing in heavy rains for a brief period.“There was no weather system in place for the weather bureau to issue an orange or red alert. The rainfall activity was received in a very brief period,” said the official.

Monday’s intense downpour was seen only between 2.30am-5.30am. IMD recordings show that till 2.30am the rainfall recorded by the IMD Santacruz observatory was 40.9 mm which surged to 210.9 mm by 5.30 am. The remaining 57 mm of rains was recorded between 5.30am-8.30am.
Further as per IMD readings the total rainfall recorded by the IMD Santacruz observatory was 268mm while the IMD Colaba observatory recorded 84 mm. The weather bureau classifies rainfall recorded above 204.5 mm as extremely heavy. While rain recorded between 64.5mm-115.5mm is heavy rains.

According to BMC’s automatic weather station data many areas recorded above 300 mm rains as well. For instance Powai received 327 mm, Andheri 303mm, Chakala 297mm,
Other parts of MMR meanwhile saw comparatively lesser rains. Thane recorded 128 mm rainfall in the same period which falls in the very heavy rainfall category (115.6mm- 204.4mm). Ulhasnagar recorded 24 mm, Shahpur 12mm, Bhiwandi 32 mm, Ambernath 27mm, Kalyan 24mm.

Rainfall of 268 mm recorded by the IMD Santacruz observatory was the second highest July day rainfall in a decade. Previously in the year 2019 the highest one day rainfall recorded was 375.2 mm on July 2, 2019. The all time highest rainfall for a July day has been of 944.2 mm recorded on July 26,2005.
In its forecast for the rest of the week, IMD did not give out any heavy rain alert and stated that only moderate rains were likely.