If the saying “morning shows the day” was to be true, at least for yesterday, the residents of Dhaka were in for another day of severe water stagnation and excruciating traffic congestion.
On Tuesday, the country’s capital city saw one of the worst ever water stagnation and consequent traffic gridlock following an hour of heavy downpour around midday.
Yesterday, the heavy downpour began around 6:30am, before most people woke up. The rain came down heavily for about half an hour and inundated most of the roads and streets in the city.
People woke up to see several feet of water on the roads especially in Dhanmondi, Karwan Bazar, Moghbazar, Shantinagar, Rampura, Kakrail, Badda and Mirpur areas.
But thankfully, as the downpour faded around 7am, the water stuck in these areas gradually receded within a few hours. The sky remained overcast with Intermittent drizzle, but there was no serious downpour throughout the rest of the day.
Interestingly, reports from around the city suggested that even the busiest of roads were surprisingly empty for a weekday.
The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded 36mm of rainfall in the capital city from 6am to midday yesterday.
Contrastingly, as much as 42mm rainfall was recorded in that one hour – from 12 noon to 1pm – that caused people all the sufferings just a day before.
There were heavy rainfall forecasts for yesterday as well. But in the evening, the Met office said: “As the monsoon is still active, heavy rainfall may continue across the country over the next two days, but in Dhaka it will decrease from today.”
Yesterday, Cox’s Bazar saw 137mm rainfall, Chittagong 81mm, Teknaf 82mm, Sylhet 115mm, Jamalpur 95mm and Rangpur 49mm.
The Met office issued a special weather bulletin stating that heavy to very heavy rainfall is likely to occur at different places in Rangpur, Barisal, Chittagong and Sylhet divisions over the next 24 hours.
The bulletin also said that due to strong monsoon, a deep convection is taking place over North Bay which may affect the coastal areas.
It suggested the maritime ports in Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Mongla and Payra to hoist local cautionary signal number three and asked all fishing boats and trawlers to remain close to the bay.
