Ayyappa devotees wishing to go to the hill shrine of Sabarimala for the Onam festival have been advised by authorities not to go there as flood waters in the Pampa river at the foothills have not receded.
Besides, roads in nearby areas of Pampa have been damaged and several trees en route to the shrine uprooted under the impact of the heavy rains, the Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the shrine, said.
The path to the shrine was also filled with mud and this would make trekking to the shrine very dangerous, the TDB said in a release.
The temple will open for Onam poojas on August 23 and close on August 28.
The devastating deluge in Kerala has left 223 dead in a fortnight and forced over 10 lakh people out of their homes.
Meanwhile, in view of uncertain weather conditions that have adversely affected Kerala, the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences on Tuesday proposed to set up a Cyclone Warning Centre in the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, by next month.
At present, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has cyclone warning centres at Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Mumbai.
The new centre would cater to the needs of Kerala and Karnataka, and would be well-equipped with state of the art of infrastructure. It would have forecasting tools to issue weather warnings and coastal bulletins to strengthen present forecasting activity.
The ministry has also planned to set up another C-Band Doppler Weather Radar at Mangalore by the end of 2019 to cover northern parts of Kerala. There are already two Doppler Weather Radars at Cochin and Thiruvananthapuram. "The three radars would cover the entire state and monitor rainfall and severe weather events, and inform the people well in advance," the ministry said.
The IMD will organise an awareness and training workshop for the state disaster management authorities to brief them on the use of new tools, and effective decision making.
