Jamshedpur : In what could be a sign of arrival of Monsoon soon, thunderstorms and lightning struck the city on Tuesday. Dark clouds hovered above the cityscape around 5 pm and gusty winds followed, resulting in heavy rain.
Officials in the department said monsoon is likely to hit the city in the next few days and the thunderstorms were a precursor to this.
The heat wave in Chotanagpur area is likely to subside within a fortnight and the pre-monsoon showers may get intense after June 18, the Met Office said.
“The pre-monsoon showers usually come a week ahead of the actual monsoon rain and so far the monsoon looks to be on track,” said an official. Jamshedpur has witnessed high temperatures in the past week, with the day temperature in many places crossing 44 degrees Celsius.
With cloud build-up and increased humidity, the Meteorological Department forecasts occasional premonsoon showers to provide relief for the citizens of the coast from the soaring mercury levels.
After nearly one week of rising heat levels, rains are back in the district. While there was drizzle reported on the outskirts of Jamshedpur, the office has recorded nearly 3mm of rainfall at their gauge in the city.
However, with the maximum temperature hovering around 42 degree Celsius, and cloud build up increasing humidity to 92 per cent (nearly 14 per cent higher than the normal recorded), the day remained hot and muggy for citizens here.
The residents of the Mango Notified Area Committee, (MNAC) have been clamoring for the drinking water availability since early April however, with the Lok Sabha elections going on the district administration was occupied with the electioneering work and even the political parties that often hit the streets on every small issue too, were busy with the elections.
The problem of the more than one lakh people remained unaddressed for large part of the summer with not a single drop of water coming out from the hand pumps and even the wells gone dry in the remote areas of the locality. Even though, MNAC had supplied water through tankers over the period but still large part of the area remained untouched in the wake of its limited supply and particularly those areas falling under the Azadnagar police station.
“Yes, in the peak of summer the rains that lashed the city in the last few days has worked good for us. The water level in the well of my house has increased and fewer hand pumps in the area too are generating water,” said, Kishore Singh, BJP member and resident of Mango post office line.
Similary, Kalu Mian, popularly known as Haji saheb, a meat merchant and resident of road number-12, Azadnagar, a densely populated Muslim area, said that the rise of water level in the river and under ground has helped them little with water now flowing out of the hand pumps, at least.
Nevertheless, the MNAC officials are not very happy with the ‘rains quenching Mango residents thirst’ logic.
In fact they have maintained that until a sound system of supplying drinking water comes up there is always the possibility of water crisis looming large over the Mango area.