The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Rain brings relief from the relentless heat

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Saturday, Jun 16, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Rain brings relief from the relentless heat

Staff Reporter

Showers due to thunderstorm activity; more predicted

IN PLENTY: Students wade their way through a slushy road in Chrompet, one of the areas lashed by rain in the early hours on Friday.

CHENNAI: Sharp showers in the city and its suburbs on Friday afternoon brought delight to residents reeling under sweltering heat despite the peaking of the summer season.

Several areas, including Saidapet, Nandanam, Adyar, Royapettah and Alwarpet, experienced a sudden downpour leaving puddles of water on roads. Areas on the western fringes of the city in the Anna Nagar-Ambattur-Avadi belt also experienced sharp showers for about half an hour in the afternoon.

Roads in Teynampet including Cenotaph Road, Ambattur and Kolathur were water logged after the brief rain spell, bringing the poor maintenance of storm water drains into sharp focus.

However, the meteorological observatories at both Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam did not record rainfall during the 12-hour reading till 8.30 p.m on Friday. Maximum day temperature stood at 37 degrees Celsius at both the observatories. A meteorological official attributed the rain to a thunderstorm activity. The weather department forecast a partly cloudy sky and showers or thundershowers in the city on Saturday.

In Tambaram and other southern suburbs of Chennai sharp showers were accompanied by strong winds, thunder and lightning early on Friday. The rain began at around 1 a.m. and lasted till about 2.30 a.m. Frequent lashes of lightning prompted officials of Tamil Nadu Electricity Board to suspend power supply as a precautionary measure in some places. Water stagnated in many of the main roads, leaving many including C.L.C. Works Road in Chromepet, slushy.

With close to a dozen schools in the stretch, thousands of children were forced to wade through muddy water. Road digging was taken up here recently as part of the underground drainage project currently under way in Pallavaram Municipality.

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