Mumbai weather update: City to see light to moderate rain

Pic/PTI

The India Meteorological Department (IMD), in its latest Mumbai weather update, has predicted a partly cloudy sky with the possibility of light to moderate rain and thunderstorms in Mumbai on Monday.

The weather department, in its latest Mumbai weather update, has predicted a "partly cloudy sky with possibility of occassional spells of light to moderate rain and thundershowers in city and its suburbs" in the next 24 hours.

The maximum temperature in the city is likely to settle at 33 degrees Celsius and the minimum temperature will be recorded at 26 degrees Celsius.

A high tide of about 3.38 metres is expected to hit Mumbai at 8.17 pm today, stated Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The civic body also said that a low tide of about 2.36 metres is expected at 2.30 pm today.

The island city recorded 1.28 mm of rainfall, eastern Mumbai 2.90 mm and western Mumbai 0.76 mm of rainfall in the 24-hour period ending at 8 am.

The IMD announced the onset of southwest monsoon over Mumbai. Earlier on Sunday, Mumbai saw rainfall, indicating the start of the anticipated weather activity. The IMD had reported that the southwest monsoon has advanced to parts of the central Arabian Sea, south Maharashtra, Telangana, south Chhattisgarh, south Odisha, and more areas of coastal Andhra Pradesh.

This year's Monsoon onset was two days earlier as the usual date of the onset is on June 1. This year, Kerala experienced widespread pre-monsoon rains.

After the onset of monsoon over Mumbai on June 9, ahead of the normal date of its arrival on June 11, the rains had stayed away from the metropolis for the last two days, turning the weather in the metropolis sultry.

Meanwhile, leading environmentalist Sunita Narain has said India is grappling with unprecedented heat this summer and no one is prepared for the level of warming being experienced. She emphasised the need for a heat index and a complete overhaul of the way modern cities are designed.

Narain, the Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), told PTI the brutal heat scorching swathes of India is a result of naturally occurring El Nino phenomenon -- an unusual warming of the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean -- and climate change.

"Nobody is prepared. Let's be very clear. 2023 was globally the hottest year on record. We have broken every record in the last 45 days with an unbroken (streak of) temperatures above 40 degrees. This is climate change. It is compounded this year by the waning of the (2023-24) El Nino. This means we really need to get our act together. We need to ensure that vulnerable communities are less affected," she told PTI.

Narain stressed the need to develop a heat index, which measures how the temperature feels to the human body when relative humidity is combined with air temperature.

(With inputs from PTI)