Mumbai, July 18: Twenty five people died in rain-related incidents as incessant heavy downpour overnight during a major thunderstorm pummeled Mumbai, causing severe water logging and traffic disruptions in the financial capital on Sunday, officials said.
The Western Railway and Central Railway briefly suspended suburban train services in Mumbai after the heavy rains, and many long distance trains were terminated or regulated at various stations, officials said.
Seventeen people died as a compound wall came crashing down on some houses located on a hillock after a landslide, a fire official said.
Mumbai recorded over 250 mm of rain in just three hours (between midnight and 3am), touching 305 mm by 7 am on Sunday, a meteorologist said.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said Mumbai was placed under a red alert, “indicating heavy to very heavy rainfall with extremely heavy rainfall at isolated locations” for the rest of the day.
Images from a doppler radar showed that the thunderstorm had a cloud top height of nearly 18 km (around 60,000 feet), the IMD said.
“To put in other words, the height/vertical extent of this monster thunderstorm is approximately twice that of Mount Everest!,” tweeted meteorologist Akshay Deoras.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a red alert for Mumbai in the backdrop of heavy rains, a BMC official said. (PTI)
