KARACHI: Under the ongoing westerly wave, the city received moderate to heavy spells of rain with thunder on Friday, which continued intermittently for eight hours throughout the day submerging key roads, underpasses and main arteries in the metropolis.
The largest quantity of rain, 42.5 millimeters, or 1.67 inches, was recorded in the Quaidabad area. Despite hour-long raining, the life largely remained unaffected as no major incident was witnessed or reported in the city
Key roads, underpasses, main arteries submerged.
The Sindh government’s move of declaring Friday as half day a day earlier and issuing a warning to people of ‘not to step out of their homes unnecessarily’ coupled with the hype on social media about expected torrent rains apparently worked as people preferred to stay indoors leaving roads with thin traffic while many commercial centers also remained deserted.
As the Met office had predicted, the rain began to fall strongly in most areas of the city on Friday around 11 a.m. and continued regularly until sunset.
The most intense spell was witnessed in the evening a little before sunset when most parts of the city received heavy downpour.
Although the new system under the westerly wave was still present, the Met office stated that it had already diminished in intensity and was predicted to pass in Karachi by Saturday morning and in other parts of Sindh by Saturday evening. After Quaidabad that received the heaviest amount of rains, other prominent spots included DHA Phase-II which received 39.5mm rain, followed by Korangi with 39.3mm, Kemari 31mm, Surjani Town 30.4mm, PAF Base Faisal 26mm, Nazimabad 12.5mm, airport 12.3mm and University Road 10.3mm.
The Met Office reports that the downpour only reached a single digit figure in all other parts of the city.
The city administration pulled all available resources together and executed its emergency plan accordingly, officials said.
“It has rained constantly for the past 2 hours and has just stopped,” Karachi Mayor Barrister Murtaza Wahab Siddiqi wrote in a post on social media platform X [formerly Twitter] after the last spell in the evening.
In addition to pumps, he stated that 53 suction vehicles were dispatched to different sites to remove rainfall when needed.
He said that in addition to traffic police, wardens had also been stationed on important thoroughfares to facilitate traffic flow.
