63-yr record: Santa Cruz got 1,469mm rain in July





24-Hr Torrent Adds Month's Water Stock

July has brought record rainfall for Mumbai and considerably reduced concerns about the extent of water cuts the city may have to face in the next one year. The rainfall for the month in Santa Cruz--1,469mm--has been the highest for July since 1951 and has surpassed even the 1,454mm recorded in 2005, the year of the 26/7 deluge.

In June, Santa Cruz had received only 87.3mm rainfall, the lowest in 63 years, forcing the BMC to impose a 20% water cut. The heavy rain in the past 24 hours itself (July 30-31) has given the city more than 30 days of water stock as the catchment areas have accumulated 1.16 million litres.
With the showers on July 2930 having added 50 days of stock, Mumbai now has water stock for over six months.

Within a week, the catchment areas have seen a 100% rise in stock. While the stock in the seven lakes that supply water to Mumbai was 3.33 lakh million litres on July 25, it rose to 8.03 lakh million litres on July 31.

The BMC, which has now halved water cuts to 10%, may cancel the cuts altogether if the good rainfall persists.

However, heavy rain affected railway services and threw road traffic out of gear.

Fourteen CR services-four of them on the Harbour line--were cancelled due to water-logging and signal failure. Trains were running at least 25 minutes late on the main CR line till late night.
Trains on the Metro network, too, ran late by 15 minutes.

Heavy traffic jams were reported at Sion, Wadala, Mulund, Kanjurmarg and parts of central Mumbai, and the Bandra-Worli sea link saw a major snarl at 10.30 am. On the Mumbai-Nashik highway, a major crack on the new Kasara Ghat road resulted in traffic being affected for some time.

Two drowned, one killed in landslide

Two men drowned in separate incidents in the city on Thursday, while a six-year-old boy was killed in a landslide in Chembur. Rafiq Shah (17) drowned after he went for a swim in the Versova beach in the afternoon, and Khalid Ansari, a Bhiwandi resident, drowned in the local Nadi Naka river, where he had gone swimming. Six-year-old Ganesh Kurade was killed early Thursday morning when a landslide flattened six shanties near Ashok Nagar in Chembur. Two other residents of Ashok Nagar suffered minor injuries.