Rain Batters Bangalore

BANGALORE: The sun disappeared ataround 3.45 pm on Friday as the city was enveloped by the dark cumulonimbusclouds racing across the sky. Typical of Bangalore, the rain began inpatches.South Bangalore received the first showers. Within minutes,however, the entire city was engulfed in a torrent of rain - easily one of theheaviest in recent times. No area was untouched.There werehailstones, rarely heard loud thunder, lightning, strong gusty winds and sheetsof rain. In a span of less than an hour Bangalore was left battered and bruised,all its hi-tech status flowing down the drains, through the flooded streets andinundated colonies.Bangaloreans across the city waited for over anhour to let the fury pass. When they moved again mini-floods greeted them onevery street. Trees lay torn down, basements flooded, vehicles stalled and onsome roads even floated by.The city''s low lying areas once againstood testimony to the fact that despite the aspirations there is little toinstil confidence in Bangalore''s capability to be a Shanghai or Singapore. Ifupmarket Church Street and Vittal Mallya Road were not spared there wasobviously little hope for Ejipura,Viveknagar or HRBR Layout.Trafficall over the city simply stopped. Motorists were too scared to move - they couldnot see where the roads ended and the drains began. And the power black out didlittle to help. The met department called it a premonsoon experience and linkedit to convective activity over the city. Their barometers notched 59.2 mmrainfall (till 5:30 pm), the highest for the current month. But it was notanywhere near the record rainfall of 179 mm on one day in October1997."There was sufficient moisture supply for heavy rainaccompanied by squall (violent winds) and hailstorm," a met department officialsaid. With Friday''s rainfall, the total rain for May 2005 touched 143.1 mm,leapfrogging the 119.6 mm average for the month.Incidentally, theforecast for Saturday is more of the same - thunder showers.