Chennai: Chennai residents can celebrate Ayudha Puja on Monday without worrying much about rain spoiling the festivities, as Regional Meteorological Centre has forecast reduced rainfall over the city and suburbs. The upper-air cyclonic circulation that triggered heavy rain on Saturday night is expected to move south and weaken, reducing the likelihood of heavy rainfall in Chennai until Tuesday.While RMC has forecast very heavy rainfall in the Western Ghats region on Wednesday, Chennai and surrounding districts will remain under yellow alert, with a warning for heavy rainfall until Thursday.RMC had earlier issued a red alert for Chennai district and an orange alert for Tiruvallur and Chengalpet on Sunday, anticipating extremely heavy rainfall exceeding 20cm as on Saturday. It later withdrew the alert in the evening and issued a fresh yellow alert. It was a bright sunny day in the city for the most part, with both Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam recording 32.2°C on Sunday.“The upper-air cyclonic circulation over north Tamil Nadu and adjoining south coastal Andhra Pradesh, which caused heavy rainfall in Chennai and suburbs on Saturday night, started weakening on Sunday afternoon. We anticipated the system to stay stable and issued the red alert for Sunday as per standard operating procedure due to flood risk, as the ground would have been saturated by absorbing the previous day’s rain,” said V R Durai, head of the regional weather forecasting center.Weather blogger Pradeep John said Chennai had not witnessed back-to-back 20cm rainfall from an upper air circulation (uac) without a break in the past. It may be noted that the Tamil Nadu state disaster management authority issued a personal warning to residents of Chennai to stay indoors following India Meteorological Department’s red alert.However, both the weather experts and IMD failed to forecast the magnitude of Saturday’s precipitation as north Chennai recorded more than 30cm of rainfall. Parry’s Corner recorded the highest rainfall at 36.3cm, followed by Kathivakkam with 34.4cm. IMD said it is not a cloudburst, which would record at least 10cm of rainfall in an hour.
