By PTI
MUMBAI: Heavy rains and strong winds lashed Mumbai and suburbs on Tuesday morning and flooded many parts of the city within a couple of hours, throwing road traffic out of gear at some places, officials said.
A tree fell near a petrol pump close to the Dockyard railway station of the Harbour Line, due to which traffic movement was affected. The tree was later moved aside and the traffic resumed but it was slow, a police official said.
Some commuters claimed that the local trains, considered as the lifeline of Mumbai, were running late by five to 10 minutes. But, officials of the Western Railway and the Central Railway said the services were running normally.
There was water-logging up to two feet at some places and vehicular movement was slow in some of the western suburbs, according to the Mumbai police.
After light showers for a couple of days, heavy rains made a comeback to the metropolis on Monday night. The city and suburbs witnessed incessant showers on Tuesday morning.
There was water-logging up to two feet at the Andheri subway, and traffic from there was diverted to the S V Road, a police official said.
Some areas near the south-bound end of the Bandra-Worli sea link, Mahalaxmi junction, Gamadia junction, Tardeo were also inundated up to 0.5 feet. A similar water-logging was witnessed at the Hindmata junction due to which the south-bound traffic was moving slow.
Traffic movement was also slow in Pratap Nagar, Jogeshwari in the western suburbs, at some spots on the Western Express Highway, Netaji Palkar Chowk, Everard Nagar and near a family court in the Bandra-Kurla Complex, the official said.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted moderate to heavy rain in the city and suburbs with a possibility of a very heavy downpour at isolated places and occasional gusty winds reaching 40-50 kmph over the next 24 hours.
On Monday, the IMD issued an ‘orange’ alert for Mumbai, predicting heavy to very heavy rainfall in the city for the next three days.
The island city (south Mumbai) received 42.42 mm of rainfall in the 24-hour period till 8 am on Tuesday as against 12.04 mm the day before.
The eastern and western suburbs recorded 63.90 mm and 52.43 mm showers, respectively, compared to 22.12 mm and 12.76 mm the previous day, a civic official said.
The MeT department issues four colour-coded predictions based on the prevailing weather conditions. The green colour indicates no warning, yellow is to keep a watch, orange is to stay alert, while red means a warning and that action needs to be taken.
