MUMBAI: While
rainfall in Mumbai’s suburbs and the island city continued to be weak on Tuesday—Santa Cruz recorded 8.2mm and
Colaba just 2.6mm between 8.30am and 8.30pm—water stock in crucial
catchment areas increased.
Water stock in lakes as on July 22, 2014, stood at 2.51 lakh million litres. This should meet the city’s requirement for approximately 70 days.
In the past 24 hours, lakes located in the neighbouring Thane’s Modak Sagar lake recorded a rainfall of 84mm, Tansa 71mm, Upper Vaitarna 30mm, Bhatsa 32mm and Middle Vaitarna 30mm—a good sign for Mumbaikars.
Meanwhile, due to the fluctuating state of monsoon, the BMC has also lined up a Plan B of
cloud seeding. On Saturday, the civic body received financial bids for the purpose from two firms.
A BMC water department official said, “We have opened the bids and sent them to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, for technical guidance as civic officials are not experts in this field.”
On the lake situation, V K Rajeev, director of the Regional Meteorological Centre in Mumbai, said, “Rainfall in catchment areas improved on Tuesday. However, the island city and the suburbs did not get much rain over the past few days as the offshore trough is not very prominent. Another reason is that winds have weakened. However, we forecast a ‘rain-giving weather system’ from the east. This depression would mean that rainfall in the city improves and a heavy spell can be expected.”
On Tuesday, Colaba recorded a maximum temperature of 29.7 degrees Celsius and
Santa Cruz 30.3 degrees Celsius.
So far, since June 1 Colaba has recorded 1,214.8mm rainfall and Santa Cruz 1,152.6mm.
Rainfall is around 14.6mm above normal in case of Santa Cruz and 113.1mm in case of Colaba.