DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand has broken a 72-year record of heavy rains. On August 22, 1951, rain with slightly less intensity was reported from Sahastradhara, around 15km from Dehradun. The Meteorological Department says the current rain outbreak is not expected to bring much relief this month.
Sources said the Dehradun district has received the maximum rain across the state in the last 24 hours with 254 mm of rainfall. The rain, which began on Sunday, continued till Monday morning, breaching the August rainfall mark in the last 72 years.
“In the last 24 hours, Dehradun district received a total of 175.1 mm rainfall, which is about 1000 per cent more than the normal. Tehri district received 82.5 mm of rainfall, while Uttarkashi district received the lowest at 20.4 mm. At the same time, 52.9 mm of rainfall was recorded, which is 273 per cent more than across the state. Apart from intermittent rains, there has been heavy rainfall, very intense and extremely heavy downpours, which contributes to cloudburst incidents,” a Met official said.
The department has issued an alert and predicted heavy rains on August 18-19. “A statewide alert has been issued for torrential rains until August 18,” said state meteorological department director Bikram Singh.
Dev Raghavendra, a scientist who studies the Himalayan environment and rainfall, told this newspaper that the population of Dehradun was 2.05 lakh in 1971, which has increased by 500 per cent to 9.92 lakh. In that proportion, it is surprising to have such a large amount of rain amid the challenges of environment and pollution,” he said.
Teams of police and SDRF are engaged in relief work round-the-clock in the disaster-hit areas. SDRF Commandant Manikant Mishra said: “The SDRF team is carrying out a search operation in Mohanchatti (Rishikesh) to look for members of a family from Haryana who were staying at a camp when a landslide buried the entire family alive.”