Rain havoc in parts of B'luru; 14 flights diverted

It took only a spell of heavy summer showers to overwhelm many parts of Bengaluru on Tuesday.

Streets were flooded, traffic slowed and more than a dozen inbound flights were diverted as a thunderstorm accompanied by lightning hit the city's eastern and northern suburbs late in the evening. It was so intense that rainwater gushed into the concourses of some metro stations on the newly opened Whitefield line.

The mercury dropped by seven degrees Celsius in the east of the city. The central and western parts, however, hardly got any rain. At Kempegowda International Airport, winds of up to 50 kmph and visibility of 1,000 metres during rain around 4.30 pm saw 14 flights being diverted — 12 to Chennai and one each to Coimbatore and Hyderabad. While KIA received 45.2 mm of rain, HAL airport received 43.2 mm.