Jammu and Kashmir has been battered by heavy rains for the last one week. Incidents of cloudbursts and flashfloods in Kishtwar and Doda, with latest being the landslide near Mata Vaishno Devi Temple, has claimed several lives.
Visuals of destruction in these areas have emerged on social media platforms. In one of the chilling clips, a portion of the road near the Fourth Tawi Bridge at Bhagwati Nagar caved in trapping a moving SUV, leaving several vehicles stranded on the road.
In the dramatic visuals, one can see people abandoning their cars near the collapsing site to reach a safe location. In some of the clips one can see cars sinking under the broken bridge.
Record Rainfall in Jammu and Kashmir
According to the meteorological centre in Srinagar, Jammu recorded 380mm of rainfall in the past 24 hours, from 8 am on Tuesday to 8 am on Wednesday, making it the highest one day rainfall recorded in the region since the MeT centre started recording in Jammu. This is almost equal to the 403.1mm average rainfall that the region receives in the month of August.
The earlier record of highest rainfall in a day was almost three decades back, when 270.4 mm of rain was recorded on September 25, 1988.
Weather forecast
Meanwhile, there is some relief forecast from the heavy rains in the region as the weather will remain partly to generally cloudy with mainly dry weather at many places. This is likely to help in the rescue operations at the Mata Vaishno Devi landslide site in which the toll has touched 38.
In the last 24 hours, Bhaderwah has received 6.0 mm of rain, Batote 6.2 mm, Qazigund 0.6 mm, Jammu 5.4 mm, Katra 5.0 mm and Banihal 1.3 mm of rain.