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LEH Cloudbrust

1) A deadly cloudburst in Leh, India killed over 100 people and left hundreds injured. The rare overnight downpour dumped over 12.8 mm of rain in an hour, devastating the unprepared town. 2) Indian President Pratibha Patil will visit the cloudburst affected Leh district to assess relief efforts and meet with survivors. She will distribute supplies and offer comfort to those displaced. 3) The cloudburst was highly localized but exceptionally severe, exceeding the monthly rainfall average and highest 24-hour record for the region. Rehabilitation and support continues for the victims of the disastrous weather event.

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Paresh Savekar
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58 views

LEH Cloudbrust

1) A deadly cloudburst in Leh, India killed over 100 people and left hundreds injured. The rare overnight downpour dumped over 12.8 mm of rain in an hour, devastating the unprepared town. 2) Indian President Pratibha Patil will visit the cloudburst affected Leh district to assess relief efforts and meet with survivors. She will distribute supplies and offer comfort to those displaced. 3) The cloudburst was highly localized but exceptionally severe, exceeding the monthly rainfall average and highest 24-hour record for the region. Rehabilitation and support continues for the victims of the disastrous weather event.

Uploaded by

Paresh Savekar
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Name: Pankaj Pednekar.

IT2 Rollno:37

LEH Cloudbrust
Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan on Saturday called Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister
Omar Abdullah and expressed grief on loss of lives in the Leh cloudburst. Chavan rang up
Abdullah and offered all possible help from Maharashtra after more than 100 were killed in the
incident, an official said.
Sudden overnight rains caused flash floods in the town of Leh, the administrative center
of the mountainous northern Ladakh region that borders China and Pakistan, killing more than
100 people and leaving hundreds injured, AP reported Friday. Many news reports described the
downpour as a “cloudburst,” which the Indian Meteorological Department described Friday
evening as a “disastrous weather event” in which “rate of rainfall may be of the order of 100mm
[millimeters] per hour.”
Rainfall is very, very scarce in the Ladakh region—it’s a dry, high-altitude region—so
when it does happen it causes havoc because the houses and towns aren’t designed to deal with
it. We were curious to find out exactly how much it had rained in millimeters, and whether this
was typical for this time of year (it is monsoon season in India from June through September)
and none of the day news stories carried the amount of rainfall.

A meteorologist at the Srinagar office of Indian Meteorological Department, G. R. Rathore,


explained that the Srinagar office collected rainfall data for Leh from 1941 to 1981 (he put
average annual rainfall for the period at just under 11 centimeters) and then stopped.
From 1981 on Mr. Rathore said that the IMD hasn’t had its own observatories in Ladakh
and added that the Indian Air Force runs the three observatories there now. The armed forces
have a strong presence in this region, which is part of India’s Kashmir state, because of its
location bordering Pakistan and China. The IMD hopes to install one manned rain observatory in
Leh by next summer and add several observatories across Ladakh as well, Mr. Rathor.According
to him, the cloudburst lasted from 1:20 a.m. to 2:20 a.m. on Friday morning but he didn’t have
data on how much rain had fallen in that hour because lines between Srinagar and Leh were
down. He referred us to the weather section of the Indian Air Force in Srinagar for more
information on the cloudburst.
But at the Air Force, a senior official said that they weren’t supposed to disclose this
information and referred us back to the civilian meteorological authorities. Getting this basic
piece of data was starting to feel like a piece of classified information.Towards the close of the
work day, many hours after the downpour and ensuing havoc first began, the IMD put
information about the cloudburst on their web site, citing the Indian Air Force.“The cloud burst
was highly localized, as the nearby meteorological observatory of Indian Air Force reported 12.8
mm of rainfall,” in the 24 hours from 5:30 a.m. on August 5, it said.
That may seem low in comparison with the Met’s definition but it’s a lot for the region—the
average for the whole month of august is 15.4 mm and the highest ever recorded in a 24-hour
period is 51.3 mm, in August 1933.Older rainfall data for Ladakh is relatively easier to get—you
can look at monthly data for the past five years.

President Pratibha Patil is scheduled to visit cloudburst affected Leh district of Jammu
and Kashmir tomorrow and assess the ongoing relief and rehabilitation works. "During her stay,
the President will tour the affected areas and meet the people at the relief camp," an official
statement said
here.
The President will also be briefed by civil and military officials about the relief and
rehabilitation operations following the cloudburst earlier this month."The President will
distribute shawls and sweaters to the affected people in the camp," the statement added. The
cloudburst on the intervening night of August 5 and 6, led to flash floods and mudslides which
claimed over 175 lives and injured about 400 people, besides causing widespread damage to
public and private property.

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