Despite IMD's heavy rain warning, city sees sunny day on Thursday

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The warnings of heavy rainfall issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Mumbai, have been a topic of light conversation among citizens. Despite the IMD's red alerts in the monsoon this year, the city has seen dry days. There was a code red for Thursday as well. But both observatories of the IMD Mumbai - Santacruz and Colaba - recorded rainfall of only 000.8mm and 0.1mm respectively until 5.30pm on Thursday.

After the warning by IMD Mumbai, the Maharashtra government had declared a holiday for schools. People were preparing for a difficult commute and other issues. But Thursday saw a sunny atmosphere. Twitterati talked about how for the third time in a row, the red alert issued by IMD Mumbai, in fact led to a sunny day.

By afternoon on Thursday, IMD Mumbai shifted to code orange warning suggesting heavy to very heavy rainfall in isolated places. As per the warning, Mumbai, Thane, Palghar were shifted to code orange.

Mahesh Palawat, Chief Meteorologist at Skymet Weather, a private weather agency, explained, "A cyclonic situation persisted over Madhya Maharashtra at mid-level sea. They (IMD) were depending on this. They thought it would remain stagnated and intensify giving heavy rain. Nashik, Malegaon areas have received heavy showers after a long gap and yesterday, Mumbai and Thane too received good rainfall from late afternoon till night. But this weather system moved very fast toward the North East Arabian Sea leading to decrease in rain activity and cloud formation. It started moving off North Maharashtra towards the South of Gujarat. This is why rains are now increasing over South Gujarat. And because of that, northern parts of Mumbai such as Palghar, Dahanu have experienced heavy rain. This is why the rain reduced and it did not go as per the prediction."

Elaborating further on the cause of change in weather conditions, Palawat said, "Now we are undergoing climate change. Tropical weather is changing very fast. Patchy rains have become very common, even in the monsoon season. Earlier, there used to be continuous rainfall although light, but it continued for 2-3 days together. However now the same amount of rain falls in 2-3 hours. Climate change is taking a toll on weather predictions. Pinpointing weather conditions is becoming difficult day-by-day."

Also Read: Mumbai Rains: IMD issues 'extremely heavy downpour' warning for Mumbai

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