Rain pounds City, throws life out of gear

Heavy rain pounded the City early on Tuesday morning and again in the night, triggering traffic jams causing hardship to commuters. Rain and gusty winds also uprooted two trees in Malleswaram and Mathikere on Tuesday night.

The City experienced heavy thunder showers on a summer morning and in just three hours, till 8:30 am, received two centimetres of rain.

According to officials of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), this is record rainfall for the month of March in a span of 24 hours in the last five years.

The downpour led to severe waterlogging, particularly in the central business district, disrupting vehicular movement during peak morning hours.

It was a bumper-to-bumper ride between 8 am and 10 am on Mission Road, J C Road, Shanthi Nagar, Double Road, Queens Road and Bellary Road, to name a few.  Many ambulances were stranded in the traffic jam. A good samaritan who created way for an ambulance was beaten up by a traffic cop on Bellary Road. Vehicular movement was slow in the central areas till evening, the traffic police said.

People returning home from work were caught unawares by the sudden downpour in the night. The northern and western parts of the City like Malleswaram, Rajajinagar, Vijayanagar, Yeshwantpur and Mathikere bore the brunt of the rainfall. Traffic was again thrown out of gear as the roads were flooded.

IMD-Bengaluru’s director Sunder Mahadev Metri told Deccan Herald that the City is presently experiencing rainfall because of two systems: Westerly trough in the central Arabian Sea and an upper air circulation over Comorin area and adjoining Sri Lanka.  If these systems prevail, the City will receive rainfall for the next 2-3 days, but if the systems intensify, rainfall will also intensify.

Metri said that because of the prevailing cloud cover, the temperature has also come down in Bengaluru. The City normally experiences a maximum of 32 degrees Celsius and a minimum of 21 degrees Celsius during this part of the year. But on Tuesday, the City recorded a maximum and minimum of 28.4 and 19.9 degrees Celsius respectively.