Mumbai: The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued an "orange message" alert to Mumbai and its suburbs, predicting heavy to very heavy rainfall at some places. The City and its suburbs on Tuesday received moderate to heavy rainfall during the day, officials said. The downpours affected the suburban train service which was further affected by a failure of an express train during the morning peak hours.
Alert-The IMD has also issued a "red message" alert for neighbouring Raigad and Palghar districts predicting heavy to very rainfall at a few places and extremely heavy rain at isolated places for Wednesday while sounding an "orange message" alert for Thane district. As per the IMD classification, an orange message alert is issued when the projected rainfall range is between 115.6 mm to 204.4 mm in a day, while a red one is issued when the 24-hour cumulative rainfall level exceeds 204.5 mm.
Rainfall level-The intensity of rain in Mumbai fizzled out on Tuesday. As the day progressed, most areas of the island city and its suburbs received light to moderate rainfall with intermittent heavy rain spells. Mumbai, eastern suburbs, and western suburbs received 17.44 mm, 22.55 mm and 18.87 mm of rainfall, respectively, between 8 am and 6 pm, a press release from the city civic body said.
Train services-Suburban services of the Central Railway were affected due to the rain and the commuter woes compounded with a failure of an express train engine during the morning peak hours. A Central Railway (CR) official said the engine of the Gorakhpur-LTT Superfast Express developed a technical snag at Atgaon station in the neighbouring Thane district.
A relief engine for the train was arranged by the Railway. Trains on the route were diverted via a loop line, the official said. There were complaints from commuters that CR suburban services were delayed by 10-15 minutes since early morning. The delay went up by 20 - 25 minutes after the engine failure incident. The commuters claimed that some suburban trains were cancelled due to the line block. Meanwhile, a Western Railway spokesperson said suburban services on their network were normal.
Traffic, and bus service normal- Bandra, Dahisar, Chembur, Fort, Matunga, Byculla and other areas of the city on Monday night received intermittent heavy rains. However, there was no major waterlogging was reported anywhere on Tuesday morning. The police said road traffic was overall normal. Transport officials said the bus services of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) operated normally. There was no route diversion due to the rains, another official said.
According to the IMD local bulletin, issued on Monday as "district forecast and warnings" for the next five days, "heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places" was forecast for the city on Tuesday. The IMD rain level observatories in Colaba (which represents the island city) and Santacruz (which represents suburbs) recorded 102.4 mm and 109.7 mm of rainfall, respectively, in the 24 hours ending at 8.30 am on Tuesday.
