Heavy rain throws traffic out of gear in Chandigarh

Long queues of vehicles were also seen on Zirakpur-Chandigarh and Zirakpur-Panchkula main road. Vehicles were trapped in long waiting queues, at three red light junctions towards Panchkula. The K area light point on Zirakpur-Panchkula main road had around three-feet-deep water.

Ajay Rajput, who was coming from Sector 35, said though traffic police performed their duties, standing in rain, due to waterlogged roads, the vehicle movement was slow. “This led to the jam. It took me around 45 minutes to reach Sector 20, which in normal times, takes just 10-12 minutes,” said Rajput.

A traffic police personnel at Zirakpur said since everyone wants to move first and the vehicles don’t follow a queue, besides avoiding waterlogged areas, it adds to more problems in regulating the traffic.

Showers to continue next week

Chandigarh will continue to receive intermittent rainfall on Sunday and the coming week, the local Meteorological department officials said on Saturday. The city has received rainfall everyday throughout this week.

“There will be heavy rain at isolated places on Sunday. Then the rain will be intermittent and temperature will remain normal,” an official of the Met department said.

On Saturday, 16.4 mm rainfall was recorded till 5.30 pm and the maximum day temperature was 34.7 degrees Celsuis, which is a notch above the normal. The night temperature on Friday was 5 notches above the normal at 28.3 degrees Celsuis.

The day temperature on Sunday has been predicted to remain around 32 degrees Celsius and the sky will remain generally cloudy. The minimum temperature during the next three nights is expected to remain around 26 degree Celsuis.

“Light to moderate rain/thundershowers likely at most places on July 21 and 22 and at many places thereafter in the state,” the Met department said in its daily bulletin on Saturday.

Meanwhile, several flights were diverted on Saturday due to bad weather, which brought down the visibility at Chandigarh airport. Deepesh Joshi, Chandigarh Airport spokesperson, told Chandigarh Newsline that the visibility reached around 1,000 metres because of the bad weather. “Some flights were diverted because they couldn’t land. The flight operations resumed around 3.45 pm,” he said.