Met lifts rains warning a day after issuing very heavy downpour caution

Ahmedabad: The met department, which has so far been unable to predict the timings of arrival of Monsoon in all parts of Gujarat, today lifted its warning of heavy to very heavy rainfall in parts of Gujarat and Saurashtra region a day after the issuance of the caution.

The weather bulletin issued by the met center here today has no rain warning for the coming five days. It has yesterday issued a bulletin which stated that during the next 48 hours ‘heavy to very heavy rains were very likely’ at isolated places in Gujarat region and heavy downpour in Saurashtra region.

On the contrary the maximum rain fall during last 24 hours was registered at only 65 mm (a little over two and a half inches) in Becharaji taluka of Mahesana district. Though parts of all the 33 districts (151 taluka) witnessed some amount of rain no where it was under the definition of heavy rainfall.

The districts with moderate rains were Surat, Navsari, Valsad in South Gujarat and Amreli, Botad, Junagadh, Jamnagar, Gir Somnath, Morbi in Saurashtra region.

Ahmedabad which is yet to see the proper onset of monsoon witnessed only 2 mm of rain as district average during last 24 hours. Many central Gujarat districts also had negligible rains. Today’s bulletin has prediction of light to moderate rains or thundershowers for the next five days.

Notably, during October 2014, the met center here had predicted a very high intensity storm ‘Nilofar’ to hit Gujarat. For this large scale precautionary arrangements were made with deployment of rescue teams of NDRF and armed forces and the state machinery. But this much hyped prediction ultimately proved a fiasco. Though it was good for the state yet the capability of the met department to accurately predict the weather developments was questioned based on which heavy expenses on the precautionary arrangements were made.

DeshGujarat