Heavy showers jam traffic, Mumbaikars can expect wet Sunday

Mumbai: The spell of heavy rainfall that began on Friday continued to lash the city and its surrounding areas on Saturday and threw traffic out of gear. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast that the heavy downpour will continue for the next 24 to 48 hours.
From 8.30am to 5.30pm on Saturday, IMD recorded 95.8mm rainfall at the Colaba observatory and 34.6mm at Santacruz.The total rainfall recorded so far this season at the Colaba observatory is 266.5mm and at Santacruz 380.1mm. Navi Mumbai, too, got its share of the downpour; it recorded 215mm rainfall in the 24 hours from Friday. Thane got 97mm from Saturday midnight till 5pm.
Weathermen have predicted heavy rainfall in parts of Konkan and Mumbai for the next 24 hours. “Mumbaikars can expect a wet Sunday. There is an offshore trough between south Gujarat and north Konkan, due to which parts of Maharashtra are getting very heavy rainfall,” said K S Hosalikar, deputy director general, western region, IMD.
The favourable weather pattern is expected to bring rain to more parts of Maharashtra in the coming week. “A low pressure is being formed in the Bay of Bengal, which will bring good rain to the interiors of Maharashtra and Vidarbha in the next 48 hours,” he said.
The rain also lowered maximum temperatures. On Saturday, maximum temperatures at Colaba fell to 26.8 degree Celsius from 30.7 degree Celsius a day earlier. Relative humidity levels stayed high too; at Colaba, it was 87% and 90% in Santacruz.
Eight wall collapse and five landslide incidents were reported in the city on Saturday; no one was injured, though. The first incident was reported early on Saturday in Jogeshwari where a portion of a fencing wall towards the Western Express Highway near Ismail Yusuf College collapsed.
In another incident, at Marol, stones from a nearby hill fell on a parked vehicle near Lok Yamuna Society on Military Road. At Dahisar hill, falling stones damaged a few houses at Kokanipada slum after which the civic authority evicted other slumdwellers for safety reasons. Similarly, at Amritnagar in Ghatkopar, the BMC asked around 15 chawl residents to vacate their premises after stones damaged one of the rooms. A similar incident was reported at Kurla.
Meanwhile, motorists were inconvenienced further with heavy rain clogging roads in the city. Closure of the Thakur Complex flyover’s south-bound arm for repairs, for one, saw snaking queues of vehicles dot the Western Express Highway on Saturday. The backlog stretched from Kandivli East right up to Dahisar East.
Congestion on the WEH was reported since 9am. Traffic police diverted south-bound motorists to the slip road beneath the Thakur Complex flyover. But snarls were reported throughout the day. “I was stuck at the Magathane flyover in Borivli East for 40 minutes,” a motorist tweeted. Later in the day, as vehicles were diverted to S V Road and Link Road from the WEH, snarls were reported there as well. Mith Chowky Junction at Malad was the worst affected. Travelling from Goregaon East to West was a nightmare too, with heavy traffic at the MTNL junction.
Later in the day, snarls were reported on Tulsi Pipe Road near Phoenix Mall towards Dadar, Worli Seaface Road between Dr Annie Besant Road and the sealink, Dadar T T flyover to Lalbaug Flyover towards Byculla, Lady Jamshedji Road from Sitladevi Temple towards Mahim Koliwada, Senapati Bapat Marg between Elphinstone Road and Matunga, E Moses Marg near Mahalaxmi Racecourse towards Haji Ali dargah, S V Road from Vile Parle near BEST Colony and S V Road from Bandra towards Khar. Vehicles crawled on the Andheri-Kurla Road from Bail Bazaar towards Saki Naka metro station, Sion Hospital flyover, Shivaji Park to Bandra, L B S Marg near Phoenix Marketcity towards Ghatkopar, Bandra Reclamation to Hill Road and from Chandivali studio to Raheja Vihar. Local residents complained of overflowing manholes for the past four days in the Chandivali studio to Raheja Vihar belt.
“Traffic police opened up one lane of the north-bound arm for south-bound traffic at the Thakur Complex flyover. This made driving back home in the evening hellish,” said a chartered accountant.
Meanwhile, suburban train services ran 10-20 minutes late.