Chennai: Chennai experienced a mini cloudburst on Sunday night that brought 7 cm heavy rain within an hour. Power went off in several areas. Weathermen say that some areas in the northernmost part of the state would continue to receive rainfall for the next two days.
”There is upper air circulation over inner Karnataka and Rayalseema regions. So border areas in Chennai received good rainfall on Sunday night and Monday early morning,” said Area Cyclone Warning Centre director S. R. Ramanan. He added that scattered rainfall would continue in one or two places in the northern districts of TN. Weather researcher Pradeep John said that out of the 8.93 cm rainfall received in Chennai district, 7.5 cm fell in a span of just one hour. “The last time when Chennai received such heavy spell was on June 6, 2011, when 7.4 cm fell in an hour and caused heavy flooding,” he added.
Meteorologists usually call a rain event as cloudburst, if over 10 cm or more rainfall is recorded in an hour. Sunday midnight’s downpour could be categorised under mini-cloudburst, as it flooded all the roads and led to power cuts in most parts of the city. Power cuts hampered the daily life of Chennai residents when they woke up on Monday morning. “The cables were not laid deep enough. So the water inundated the lines and there was no electricity from midnight. As a result, we did not have water and it affected our daily routine,” said S. Karthikeyan in Kodambakkam.
At Chennai airport, the sudden downpour flooded the runway and forced the authorities to divert flights from Delhi, Frankfurt, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok to Bengaluru. The diverted flights reached Chennai after 3 a.m. During the heavy thundershowers and lightning period, no flights took off from the city.
Due to slow traffic on roads, many passengers and airline crew members struggled to reach the airport on time. The outgoing flights were also delayed by about three to four hours,” an airport source added. As usual, lack of proper information on display boards added to the woes of people who had come to receive passengers at the airport.
