Cloud Burst in Hyderabad resulted in Heavy rains

Cloud Burst in Hyderabad

The topic of my Tuesday post came into my mind last night when I first heard about “Cloud burst in Hyderabad”! Till that moment I was under the impression that cloud bursts usually happen in hilly areas like Uttarakhand the deadliest one came in 2013 in Uttar Kashi. But Is it possible that a cloud burst like that can happen in Hyderabad? Yes, it is and yesterday we witnessed it. What we witnessed last evening was a rare phenomenon occurring probably once in 30-40 years!

So lucky are those who got drenched in the cloud burst and got affected by it. Statistically speaking the city on an average got 107.3mm rainfall. 100mm is minimum to be qualified for a cloud burst. Golkonda area that covers Upperpally where I reside, Mehdipatnam, Shaikh pet, Gachibowli areas got the highest ever rain this season of 132mm in a span of 3 hours. Pressure was oscillating between 1007 and 1004hpa and wind speed was around 5kmph on average and highest was 31kmph.

How did this cloudburst happen in Hyderabad?

Winds were coming from two directions. Western winds from Arabian sea were blowing towards Hyderabad and Easterlies from Bay of Bengal were also blowing towards Hyderabad. Till 2PM everything was fine. Suddenly at 2PM we noticed two sets of clouds that started coming from two different directions. First were a dry and warm clouds from Arabian sea were coming towards Hyderabad after raining in Kerala and Karnataka. These clouds had very less moisture. The second was a moist, dark clouds from Bay of Bengal were rushing towards Hyderabad after raining in AP and parts of Telangana. At 2.30 there was a real danger of they meeting and the actual meeting happened around Sangareddy, Tellapur, Kokapet and Kismatpur areas on out skirts of Hyderabad bordering Rangareddy and Medak districts.

Around 3.45PM

It became totally dark with Bay of Bengal clouds which were at a higher elevation covering Hyderabad. Within minutes they were joined by drier and less moist Arabian sea clouds in the above-mentioned areas. When the Bay of Bengal clouds that came from East started raining at 4PM the moisture was collected by the Arabian sea wing clouds that came from Western direction.

Thus, though it was raining no rain reached the ground. The cloud that was located below with less moisture was collecting the rain of the cloud above. After collecting sufficient moisture because of its warm temperature, it started pushing back the water back to the cloud above. Thus, the entire moisture went back to Bay of Bengal cloud and it became very heavy. This process took almost 30 minutes.

Around 4.30pm

The Arabian sea cloud transferred back all its moisture to the Bay of Bengal wing cloud located above and the cloud was loaded with water. This increased the mass of the cloud and the cloud suddenly pushed down by its own weight. That triggered a sudden heavy rain at around 4.45PM. Within few minutes the cloud came down rapidly due to heavy weight and collided with the Arabian sea wing cloud located below and that lead to the bursting of cloud leading to heavy downpour for almost 45 minutes till 5.30pm.

That is when wind started blowing and the cloud started moving. But within 30 minutes around 6.15PM another set of clouds came from Arabian sea and collided with this cloud triggering another wave of cloud burst that lasted another hour. Thus, in a span of less than 3 hours two major cloud bursts happened triggering a record rainfall of 132mm. This takes the total rainfall in Golkonda to 812mm this season compared to normal of 655mm. This is an excess of 24% and this is the best rainfall in 5 years for Hyderabad city.

 

Why did IMD not forecast it before?

Though cloud bursts are tough to predict, but if we carefully observe the changing temperature and pressure gradient along with wind patterns it’s not difficult to predict a cloud burst. Countries like US, UK, Japan and even China have been accurately predicting them for many years! But our IMD guys stay quiet till the event happens and then issue a warning of heavy rain for next 48 hours! And that forecast always goes wrong. IMD should wake up and spend more time in observations and accurate predictions. Otherwise a disaster like Uttarakhand 2013 can always happen!

What happened in Uttarakhand in 2013?

On 16th June 2013 monsoon arrived in Uttarakhand 14 days before time. When train goes full speed it gets difficult to control. Same way the monsoon was travelling at a high speed in Uttarpradesh and instead of going towards west the winds went Northwards and directly collided with Himalayas in Uttarakhand districts of Chamoli, Dehradun, Rudra prayag and Uttar Kashi districts.

The result was death of over 5700 people, the worst in the history in a long long time!

Look at the rainfall in these four districts because of the cloud burst.

  1. Dehradun 846.3mm
  2. Rudraprayag 617.4mm
  3. Uttarkashi 520.4mm
  4. Chamoli 488.3mm

The need of the hour is to upgrade our technology, train people in modern predictive techniques to avoid these kinds of disasters. If there was a warning at 2.30pm also yesterday that a cloud burst was going to happen in Hyderabad many people would have remained indoors and the lives of those 7-people lost, would have been saved!! This in short is the story behind Yesterday’s cloud burst!

Published by Sriram

A Teacher trying to Learn new things and explore the world each day! Believe in Happiness by the virtue of sacrifice and forgiveness.

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