As much as 85.8 mm of rain cascaded on to the streets of Ahmedabad in the 24-hour spell, bringing down the temperature to 31.3 degree Celsius from Sunday's 33.4 degree Celsius.
The weather gods decided to throw a wet blanket on many planned weekend festivities by lashing the city with a season's record 24-hour burst of rainfall- and the third highest 24-hour downpour of the last decade.
As much as 85.8 mm of rain cascaded on to the streets of Ahmedabad in the 24-hour spell, bringing down the temperature to 31.3 degree Celsius from Sunday's 33.4 degree Celsius.
The recorded figure by the Indian Meteorological Department on August 12, 2006 was 90.7 mm, the second highest ever, though the 200.1 mm that fell on August 24, 2003, will be a record that will be hard to beat.
The all time record for highest 24-hour rainfall in August for the city is 250.0 mm, recorded on August 30, 1976. The relative humidity on Monday was 98 per cent.
It has been noted that during the last decade, rainfall has been increasing consistently in the city. An overview of the last ten years shows that frequency of heavy rainfall has gone up from 39 in 1979-88 to 50 in 1999-2008 in Ahmedabad.
With the frequency in heavy rainfall, the average for the season has also increased, the weather office says. From an average of 720 mm in 1999, the average for the city has upped to 760 mm in 2009. The averages for Surat and Bhavnagar also have increased as the rainfall extremes have gone up in the past decade in the coastal areas of Gujarat.
Dr Kamaljit Ray, director, Indian Meteorological Department, Gujarat said, "The incidence of heavy rainfall has kept increasing during the last 40 years in the coastal areas of the state. One of the prime reasons for this is global warming and climate change.
Another major reason for this change is that in the last decade the state has been receiving rain mechanism from systems in the Arabian Sea, while a few decades ago the state's rain pattern was dependent on cyclonic circulations over Bay of Bengal."
The total seasonal rainfall for the city now stands at 567.1 mm, which is 167.8 mm more than normal. The state weather office forecasts a few widespread spells of rain accompanied with heavy thundershowers for the city in the next two days.
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