Nada’s poor show upsets water managers

At a time, when the city is grappled with drinking water scarcity, the Chennai Metro Water department exuded hope that the northeast monsoon will play its part to tackle the drinking water scarcity. “We are still hoping for good monsoon and we will devise a contingency plan, only if the northeast monsoon completely fails,” said a Metro water official. Meanwhile, Public Works Department (PWD) is heaving a sigh of relief, as the inflow of Krishna water is gradually increasing. The inflow to Poondi reservoir was 425 cusecs and if the current situation was to continue for the next one month, Chennai city could manage drinking water for next two months, the engineer added.

Earlier, Nada crossed the coast near Nagapattinam during the wee hours of Friday, according to the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC), Chennai. However, RMC officials said that interior pockets in the state will witness heavy to very heavy rain, while Chennai will witness mild rainfall in a few areas. Dr S Balachandran, Director, Area Cyclonic Warning Centre, RMC, told DTNext, “Our observations and satellite imagery showed that the deep depression over southwest Bay of Bengal moved west-northwestwards and weakened into a depression on Thursday evening.”

The depression further moved westwards and crossed north Tamil Nadu coast near Nagapattinam between 4 and 5 am on Friday and lay centered about 15 kilometres west of Nagapattinam and 20 kilometres southwest of Karaikal, the director added. “Before making landfall, most parts of the delta districts received heavy rainfall. Further, Nagapattinam, Vedaranyam, Mayiladuthurai, Karaikal and Puducherry received heavy rains,” said another weatherman.