Agency says rise in daytime temperature and humidity in past two days will go away; Mumbai to receive light to moderate rainfall soon
A spell of heavy showers in Mulund on Tuesday, though this was not the same scene across the city. Pic/Sameer Markande
Despite the monsoon coming in two days earlier than expected, the island city of Mumbai has received little or no rainfall for the past 48 hours.
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The India Meteorological Department says that this is no cause for worry because the temporary rise in temperature is what in turn causes convection, which then leads to rainfall. Speaking with mid-day, an IMD official said: “This phenomenon of not receiving rainfall intermittently during the monsoon is common in coastal areas. There isn’t continuous rainfall that takes place. When heavy rainfall occurs during the monsoon, then after 36 hours, it is very likely that clear skies will prevail, as has been for the past two days.”
The weather official said Mumbai is expected to receive light to moderate rainfall with isolated heavy rainfall spells over the next few days. “Rainfall isn’t uniformly spread over the city of Mumbai because it is an island. Right now if it’s raining in Colaba, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is raining in Borivali too. It depends on the location of clouds and time-specific rainfall, which has happened many times.” The official said SantaCruz has reported 107 mm of rainfall over the last few days, but Colaba has reported only 46 mm.
IMD also said that there would be a relief in daytime temperature for Mumbaikars. The official said, “The temperature is expected to hover around 31 or 32 degrees Celsius. If it is raining the entire day, then the daytime temperature is likely to go down even further. If it is sunny then the temperatures will rise, thereby causing convection, and again next day rainfall will occur and the temperature will go down.”
The official added: “There is an offshore trough from the north Maharashtra coast to the north Kerala coast. Due to the activation of this offshore trough, we are getting rainfall now. Also, the southwest winds are along the coast and that is giving us rainfall too. In the coming days, we are likely to have light to moderate rainfall with heavy rainfall at isolated places.”