Chennai soon to have wettest July in 200 yrs

In the afternoon, the Nungambakkam station recorded a maximum temperature of 37.7 degrees Celsius and Meenambakkam recorded 36 degrees Celsius. It was a blistering afternoon with humidity percentages of 100 and 96 per cent recorded.

This was broken by thunderstorms in the evening. Despite Nungambakkam recording only 7 mm of rainfall, areas like Valasarawakkam and KK Nagar recording over 50 mm of rainfall. Kolapakkam recorded 63 mm of rainfall. “Meenamabakkam recorded a total rainfall of 271 mm in July. On Tuesday, it got 11 mm. It needs 18 mm more for wettest ever July for Meenambakkam in 200 years (taking both Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam into consideration),” said Pradeep John, who runs the Tamil Nadu Weatherman page on Facebook.

In the districts, parts of Coimbatore, Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur and Salem recorded around 5-6 mm of rainfall. In addition to the aforementioned districts, The Nilgiris, Theni, Dindigul, Thoothukudi and Virudhunagar are expected to have isolated cases of heavy rainfall. Mild to moderate rainfall is expected across the State, with thunderstorms. According to the director of the Regional Metrological Department, Chennai, S Balachandran, these rains are typical of the July month and can be expected for the rest of the week.

Meanwhile, three domestic flights from Hyderabad, and Madurai and Varanasi, which were scheduled to land in the Chennai airport, was diverted to Bangalore. Similarly, two flights from Delhi and Tuticorin were made to wait in the air for a few minutes till the climatic conditions changed.