The IMD has issued an orange alert for Mumbai, warning of very heavy rains at isolated places with strong winds on Monday as the very severe cyclonic storm Tauktae is likely to pass close to the Mumbai coast towards Gujarat.
Farmers' protest against the three farm laws passed by the Centre has entered its 23rd day on Friday. "We are preparing ourselves for a longer stay as our fight against black laws will continue. It's getting colder, so we're putting more tents," said a protester.
Several parts of north and west India reeled under scorching heat wave with the temperature touching 50 degree Celsius in Rajasthan's Churu district on Tuesday, even as the meteorological department predicted very heavy rainfall in Assam and Meghalaya till May 28.
A CPCB official said a number of factors were responsible for the deteriorating air quality, including vehicular pollution, construction activities and meteorological factors.
The mercury at the Safdarjung Observatory is expected to breach the 43-degree mark on Thursday and touch 44 degrees Celsius by Friday, according to the India meteorological department.
The air quality had turned 'severe' on Saturday evening with stubble burning accounting for 32 per cent of Delhi's PM2.5 pollution, but firecracker emissions and calm winds made the situation even worse.
The meteorological department in India has predicted that there will be normal monsoon rains next month that will result in better crops for the country's 234 million farmers.
The India Meteorological Department said rainfall would be accompanied by gale wind speed reaching 140 to 150 kmph and gusting to 165 kmph along and off Odisha and north Andhra Pradesh coasts.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Wednesday said that there was no tsunami threat in Mumbai after an earthquake of 8.9 magnitude hit waters off the western coast of northern Sumatra in Indonesia. Talking to reporters, Chavan said an alert has been received from the Hyderabad-based Centre for National Tsunami Warning as a precaution. "The alert will continue till further instructions are received. But there is no threat in Mumbai," he added.
This month has been the "wettest" March in northern and central parts of the country in the past 100 years, the Indian Meteorological Department said on Sunday, and predicted more rains in the coming two weeks.
Installed at a cost of Rs 450 crore in Pune and Noida, the two supercomputers are set to fundamentally alter the weather forecasting scenario in India by enabling the IMD to forecast severe weather conditions up to the sub-district or block level.
Pollution levels in Delhi during the Diwali period are likely to remain in the higher end of the 'very poor' category in the absence of emissions due to fireworks, the Ministry of Earth Sciences' air quality monitor, SAFAR said.
Centre ordered release of Rs 1,086 crore to four states as advance financial assistance for undertaking preventive and relief measures to deal with the cyclone.
Santosh Patkar of Devgadh Taluka Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra is a worried man these days. Devgadh, which is known as the home to world famous Alphonso variety of mangoes, has seen an unusual drop in yields which is affecting farmers' income. Being one of the primary agricultural produce from the area, Santosh is not untouched by this somewhat rare phenomenon. He said in his own mango garden, yields have come down by a third from most trees.
Delhi recorded an air quality index of 315 at 11:10 am. The last time the air quality hit such a poor level was in February.
The national capital battled weather conditions in the "red category" as the maximum temperature recorded at the Palam observatory was 46.1C,
The weatherman said when 'Amphan' makes the landfall between West Bengal's Digha, some 180 km from Kolkata, and Hatiya island in Bangladesh on Wednesday afternoon or evening, it will pack sustained wind speed of 155 to 165 kmph, gusting at 185 kmph. The gale-force wind, blowing at a speed of 240 to 250 kmph and gusting to 275 kmph at one point, had lost intensity and was moving at a speed of 200 to 210 kmph, gusting to 230 kmph on Tuesday evening.
The MeT department warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in Gangetic West Bengal till Saturday, ahead of Durga Puja festivities.
'Southwest Monsoon has advanced into remaining parts of Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab and thus it has covered the entire country today, the 26th June 2020,' the IMD said in its special Daily Weather Report.
The smog reduced the visibility to merely 300 meters in the morning affecting traffic, an official of the India Meteorological Department said.
The Santacruz observatory recorded 286.4 mm rainfall during the 24-hour period ending at 8.30 am on Wednesday, making it the fourth highest rainfall in Mumbai since 1974, an Indian Meteorological Department official said.
Parts of Raigad, Ratnagiri districts in the coastal Konkan region and Kolhapur district in western Maharashtra, have been worst affected by the floods. Besides that, heavy rains have been pounding parts of Satara district.
With the cyclone set to make landfall on Wednesday, Maharashtra and Gujarat activated their disaster response mechanism, deploying NDRF teams and evacuating people from areas likely to be hit.
The India Meteorological Department, which had issued a red colour-coded alert for north India for May 25-26 when the prevailing heatwave conditions are expected to peak, said dust and thunderstorms are likely to bring some relief on May 29-30.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday conducted an aerial survey of rain-ravaged areas of Uttarakhand to asses the damage which the state government has pegged at Rs 7,000 crore.
The Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Authority, in a tweet, said as per the latest updates #GajaCyclone is likely to have landfall between 8 pm and 11 pm on Thursday in all probability in Nagapattinam district.
The Ayanagar weather station recorded 122.8 mm between 8.30 am on Wednesday and 8.30 am on Thursday, which was 11 times the normal rainfall.
The minimum temperature settled at 2.6 degree Celsius at the Safdarjung observatory, four notches below the season's average, and humidity was 100 per cent. The visibility recorded by the Safdarjung and Palam observatories stood at zero metres at 8.30 am. It was recorded at 100 metres at Safdarjung and zero at Palam at 5.30 am.
A city resident doesn't find Delhi to be livable anymore.
The IMD has also issued a red-coded warning alert to the Odisha and West Bengal coasts.
The prime minister also asserted that in view of the COVID-19 situation, the states must ensure that people follow all health precautions such as wearing of face masks, hand sanitisation and maintaining an adequate physical distance with each other while undertaking rescue efforts.
However, some areas in south Mumbai, which witnessed a record rain on Wednesday, were still water-logged, they said. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted moderate to heavy rainfall in the city and suburbs and intense showers in some parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region in next 24 hours.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced Rs 10,000 as immediate relief to each flood-hit household in Hyderabad, lashed by incessant rains since last week, besides an assistance of Rs 1 lakh each to those whose houses were completely destroyed and Rs 50,000 for the partially damaged.
An amount of Rs 12 crore has been earmarked for the project.
Nepal has been hit by heavy rainfall since Thursday. More than 25 districts and 10,385 households have been affected.
The meteorological department has forecast more rains through the day and relative humidity at 100 per cent in Delhi.
The two western states, already battling a raging pandemic, which has put their health infrastructure under severe strain, opened new fronts to tackle the fallout of the storm which is expected to make a landfall close to Mumbai on Wednesday. They are likely to be impacted most by the cyclone.
Isolated heavy rainfall is also very likely over north Konkan region during the same period, it said.
Chief Minister K Palaniswami announced a solatium of Rs 4 lakh to the kin of each of the victims
Five people, including a toddler, have been killed and over 100,000 people evacuated in Malaysia after one of the country's worst floods hit 4 states, forcing Prime Minister Najib Razak to cut short his holiday in the US.
