After more than a week of severe rain, Mumbai is experiencing another bout of extremely heavy rain. The Indian Meteorological Department has issued a red alert for Mumbai and its environs until Friday. Schools in the city have been closed due to severe rain. Traffic, local rail, and bus services are all likely to be disrupted. As many as 13 NDRF teams are deployed in various districts of Maharashtra in the wake of heavy rains and flood, ANI reported.
The IMD forecast predicts heavy to very heavy rain in Mumbai and its suburbs today, with the chance of extremely severe rain in isolated areas. Rainfall of moderate to high intensity is expected across Mumbai in the next 3-4 hours, according to IMD.
"Monsoon in entire Maharashtra has aggravated as it is active in the Southwest region. We've given a red alert warning for Mumbai since 223 mm of rainfall has been recorded in Colaba in the last 24 hours and 145 mm in Santacruz. For today, we've given an orange alert warning in Mumbai...We've announced yellow and orange alerts for Vidarbha and Marathwada respectively," IMD official Sunil Kamble said, ANI reported.
According to authorities, the highway police stopped traffic on the Mumbai-bound arm of the Pune-Mumbai Motorway for two hours on Thursday to clear rocks and muck off the lane, news agency PTI reported.
Between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Mumbai had recieved 101.35 mm of average rainfall, while the eastern and western suburbs received 87.54 mm and 102.55 mm of rainfall, respectively. On Wednesday night, Iqbal Singh Chahal, the BMC's municipal commissioner and administrator, released a statement about it. "In view of the red alert issued for Mumbai, the BMC has declared a holiday for all municipal, government-run and private primary, secondary and higher secondary schools and all colleges in the city and suburbs on Thursday as the safety of students is a top priority," the statement reads.