Mumbaikars bore the brunt of the monsoon fury on Friday, as heavy rains lashed the Island city and suburbs, inundating low-lying areas and rail tracks, disrupting rail and road traffic and delaying flights.
Owing to the heavy downpour and poor visibility, there were delays ranging from 15 to 30 minutes in the arrival and departure of flights at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in the Maximum City. While the suburban train services on the mainline of Central Railways were suspended for better part of the day owing to waterlogging of the tracks at several places, trains on the harbour line and the Western Railway ran 30 to 45 minutes behind schedule.
Railway tracks lay under deep water at Sion, Matunga, Kings Circle, Chunnabhratti and Thane, leading to disruption in train services.
The road traffic was also hit across the metropolis owing to severe waterlogging in floodprone areas of Hindmata Cinema, Kings Circle, Mahalakhmi, Byculla (east) Dadar, Gandhi Market, Ghatkopar, Kurla, Kherwadi, Bandra and Santa Cruz. The flooding in low-lying areas increased when Mumbai witnessed 4.45 meter high tides at 2.05 pm.
Traffic snarls were reported from Eastern Express Highway, Western Express Highway, lal Bahadur Shastri Marg, Swami Vivekananda Road, Jogeshwari-Vikhroli link Road and the Ghodbunder Road, where vehicles moved at snail’s pace.
While thousands of office-going Mumbaikars stayed indoors, others who ventured out either reached their destination late or returned home after being stranded for hours.
According to the Brihnanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the Island city registered a rainfall of 81.71 mm till 4 pm, while the eastern and western suburbs received 92.03mm and 79.44 mm of rain respectively during the same period.
"While a heavy rainfall of 72 mm was recorded during the first three hours of the day between 8:30 and 11:30 am, another 54.6 mm of rainfall was observed over the Maximum City. In a span of six hours, Mumbai recorded a whopping 126.6 mm of rain. In less than a week, Mumbai has recorded 307 mm of rain against its monthly rainfall of 529.7 mm," Skymet Weather reported.
The Mumbai-based Regional Meteorological Centre of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast “intermittent rain or showers” in the city and suburbs and heavy rain fall at some places, during the next 24 hours.
As the metropolis reeled under heavy downpour, some celebrities took twitter to express themselves.
"#Mumbai rains .. Yes nature has been aggressive .. but do not panic all will be well .. happens to the best cities in the World !!," veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan tweeted.
"Heavy rains in Mumbai turn our building's lawn into a lake! #mumbairains #Mumbai," said Kabir Bedi.
"This is stay at home & have samosas & chai kind of weather. Yet some of us have to make a long traffic trudge & work. #mumbairains," TV anchor Mandira Bedi wrote.