Most of the parts in Chhattisgarh, barring a few places, on Monday evening were taken by pleasant surprise, as fairly widespread (FWS) rains lashed all over the state, thereby setting aside the humid conditions and bringing much relief for everyone, particularly the paddy growers.

The weathermen, however, have warned State to embrace more inclement weather as they issued a Yellow Alert – heavy rains and thunderstorms – for the next couple of days. But quite strangely, despite so much rainfall received by Chhattisgarh, Surguja district continues to be deficient with 50 per cent less rains received in the current season.

As per the official statistics availed from Meteorological Centre in Raipur, out of 154 weather stations spread across the Chhattisgarh, 112 stations recorded heavy rains on Monday, which weathermen in technical terms defined it as fairly widespread (FWS) rains.

However, there were only 42 stations, which didn’t receive a single drop of the rains and most of these stations are under the Surguja division. “Surguja, Jashpur, Koriya, Balrampur and Surajpur, are the rain-scarce districts of the entire Surguja region, which have record deficient rainfall of -50, -32, -28, -22 and -15 percent respectively. However, Bemetara happens to be the only district of Durg division, which too recorded -31 per cent of rain deficiency. Similarly, many stations of Bilaspur division also didn’t receive any rains today,” read the MeT statistics.

Meanwhile, according to the weathermen, the capital Raipur alone accounted for 21.3 mm of rainfall in the past 24 hours, whereas 14.1 mm rain was alone recorded at 17:30 hours on Monday evening.

As usual the forested Bastar division received the highest amount of rainfall throughout the monsoon and even today, wherein Chhotedongar area of Narayanpur recorded highest 96.2 mm rains followed by Gadiras village of Sukma district, which received 65.9 mm rainfall. Jagdalpur, the divisional headquarters of Bastar, recorded 24.6 mm rainfall whereas Rajnandgaon district under Raipur division also received 7 mm rainfall.

In the meantime, many of those, who often take weather forecasts for granted, were in for ‘drenched’ surprise as sudden and heavy rains didn’t give them opportunity to seek shelter. Even for the smart populace, who carried along with them rain coats to deal with unforeseeable weather twists, had to face a lot of difficulties as the intensity of sudden rains was high. “Whether pedestrians or motorists, the heavy rainfall brought the normal movement to a snail’s pace everywhere. Particularly, the intensity of rains led to water-clogging even on the main roads, most of them which are full of potholes, that makes driving unsafe and unpredictable,” said Nazar Abbas, a two-wheeler rider, whose bike developed some electrical snag after he attempted to cross inundated water near Jaistambh Chowk, the heart of capital city. Weathermen bulletin issued on Monday stated that the rainfall received by Chhattisgarh was attribution to yesterday’s cyclonic circulation over north-west and adjoining west-central Bay of Bengal. “Under its influence, a low pressure area has formed over the same region. It is likely to move north-westwards towards Odisha coast and become more marked during 24 hours,” they said, adding further that a monsoon trough now passes through Bhatinda, elhi, Hardoi, Varanasi, Ranchi, Balasore and hence eastwards to lower pressure area over north-west and adjoining west-central Bay of Bengal. Henceforth, a ‘yellow alert’ warning was necessitated for next 48 hours as heavy rainfall and thunderstorms are very likely to occur at isolated places over Chhattisgarh while capital Raipur will be no exception to the aforesaid forecast, the MeT bulletin maintained.