Recent - Rare - Desert Floods in YEMEN

Flash floods hit north-east India

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced after floods inundated more than 70 villages in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam.

Three districts- Kamrup, North Lakhimpur and Sonitpur - have been affected by the floods.

A senior official said an embankment of the Putimari river was breached late on Tuesday following incessant rains.

Floods in India usually occur during the monsoon season, which generally lasts from June to September.

Flood waters have displaced nearly 70,000 people, damaged crops, and cut off a national highway linking Assam with the rest of the country, officials say.

Paramilitary and local civil defence forces have been called in for rescue operations. Two relief camps have been set up in the Puthimari area.

"It all started overnight and we are trying to shift the people to safer places," Hemkanta Pegu, a civil servant in Lakhimpur district told the Reuters news agency.

Officials say that temporary shelters for the homeless have been set up in schools and government buildings.

They say that many people are camping on highways under plastic sheets with whatever belongings they had managed to salvage from the flood waters.

The regional weather office has warned of more showers in the next 48 hours in the region.

Officials have blamed the latest flooding on the release of excess water from dams by power generating companies in the nearby state of Arunachal Pradesh and in neighbouring Bhutan.

2 day Temperature & Percipitation forecast

These are forecasts of accumulated precipitation and temperature extremes for the next two days (0 - 48hrs).

Bright & Clear ....Diwali!!

Nice to see a clear & suuny Diwali morning...

It's now clear that the present weather system has cleared.

And what next??

Going by the latest satellite pic... a huge mass of high moisture cloud mass is seen over most of south bay.

Whether it'll become as a depression? we'll have to wait till this present weather system clears out.

The latest GFS model from "weatherzone.com.au" suggests, this cloud mass will move to the east and dissipate.

"04B - Rashmi" - crashes inland

Take a look at the latest satellite pic and JWTC projection.

This "rashmi" is quiet a fast mover.... just a day back it was recognized as a cyclone and now it's inland.

Here is some extract from http://savethehills.blogspot.com

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A cyclone called Rashmi is inching towards coastal Bengal, carrying with it the threat of heavy rain in Calcutta though the city does not fall in the storm’s path projected till late this evening.
The Met office said a deep depression over west-central Bay of Bengal, which caused Saturday’s rain, had intensified into a cyclone and was headed for the Bengal-Bangladesh coast near Sagar Island.
Cyclone Rashmi, rated in the low-intensity Category 1 till this evening, is expected to make landfall between 8 and 9.30am on Monday.
“The cyclone now lies about 350km south of Calcutta and is expected to hit the Bengal-Bangladesh coast on Monday morning. The cyclone has been named Rashmi,” said G.C. Debnath, the director of the weather section at the Regional Meteorological Centre in Alipore.
Met officials said gusty winds at speeds between 60 and 80kmph were expected along the Bengal coast, along “with heavy to very heavy rain” on Monday. Officials also warned of heavy rain in Calcutta.
The officials said tonight that the cyclone was proceeding in a north north-eastern direction and was expected to move into Bangladesh soon after hitting land.
“Calcutta is not in the path of the cyclone. But it will cause rains in the city. We are keeping a close watch on the movement of the cyclone,” an official said. But he added that since 350 kilometres lay between the cyclone and land, a shift in course could not be ruled out.
The district magistrates of East Midnapore, South 24-Parganas, North 24-Parganas and West Midnapore have been asked to take precautionary measures, finance minister Asim Dasgupta said.

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No rain for Diwali...a forecast

Today (26-Oct-08) there is no rain and surely there's not going to be any rains.
And
very importantly there'll not be any rain till Diwali day (27-Oct-08) evening 6 PM.
So people can Enjoy the Diwali without and rain problems.
This 3 day dry spell OR lull in rains will be good for the CRACKER biz..!

" HAPPY DIWALI "

How chennai looks in Rain???

"RAIN BATTERS CHENNAI" from Sulekha.com blog

It is a well known fact that Chennai city is never built with rains in mind because for us monsoon failures are more common than rain battering the city which is a rare occasion. To cap it even if it rains for 24 hours the city will be thrown completely out of gear and jeopardize normal lives. The school children and college students are the worst sufferers in this rain.

This year the ruling party added to the misery of the college students by "obliquely" forcing them to "participate in human chain to express anguish over the sufferings of the Tamilians in Sri Lanka". It was a pathetic site to see those students standing drenched to the bone and most of them feeling terribly embarrassed because the salwar kameez they were wearing was making their contours obvious. The entire human chain drama is purely a political hullabaloo and why the Chief Minister chose to harass the students to stand in the rain continuously for more than five hours which made them shiver is a mystery. (refer Times of India news item timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Studehttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Students_suffer__) While Chief Minister Karunanidhi openly criticized his die hard enemy Jayalalithaa as a barren woman ( what a cheap word to use) who cannot understood the problems of children like him who has sired many children (through more than one wife) and is blessed with innumerable grand and great grand children did not seem to "bother about the plight of the students drenched in the rain". He came in his flashy car at 5 P.M in the Evening when the rains had abated to some extent and his political heir M K Stalin came in another car and his "love child" Kanimozhi was not seen anywhere at all - the poor government college students were "forced" to wait till the CM arrived. And he did not arrive well before because he had other plans" to treat all who fell sick free the next day" most probably!!.

Tamil Nadu politics is unique in several ways. One is it continuous unholy alliance with the film industry. Especially in the recent past after Vijayakanth's victory in the Assembly elections every actor mouths stupid sentences on issues of nationally grave implications and it is hugely publicized in all the electronic media. While all other States of India clearly keep politics away from other walks of life ( even Amar singh's hobnobbing with Anil Ambani, Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan ended in a fiasco) any Tom Dick and Harry makes political comments and politics after all is the best short cut to cheap popularity and if luck favors the taste of power too.

© girija jinnaa., all rights reserved

First cyclone "04B"

First cyclone of the season "04B" but fortunately or unfortunately it's not for us.
Instead it's heading for Bangladesh.
Take a look at the latest JWTC graph and latest satellite pic (weather.com)

2 hr Heavy rain

Yesterday (24-oct-08) very heavy electric shower lashed almost all parts of the city
Chennai airport reported 122 MM
Showers lashed for 2 hrs.