The monsoon is literally spitting fire over the western parts of India as extremely heavy to very heavy rain lashed the region overnight.
East Rajasthan, west Maharashtra, Gujarat, west Madhya Pradesh and parts of the west coast are the areas where it vented its fury during the 24 hours ending this morning.
The blitzkrieg is forecast to continue variously for the rest of the day and next three days, an India Meteorological Department update said in the afternoon.
The rains are driven mainly by a well-marked low-pressure area perched over northwest Bay of Bengal for a second day. Its moorings over seawaters will only add to its rain-generating capacity.
The other rain-friendly formations are a persisting upper air cyclonic circulation over west Madhya Pradesh and the offshore trough that runs from south Gujarat to Karnataka coast.
What they do is to hold incoming moisture from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, pump it up to appropriate height where it cools only to drop down as rain.
Extremely heavy rain
Among the stations recording extremely heavy to very heavy rain are: Bhira (37 cm); Ahmedabad (29 cm); Mount Abut (20 cm); Bulsar and Gandhinagar (18 cm each); Mahabaleshwar (15 cm); Alibagh (11 cm); and Bhavnagar, Dahanu, and Bhawanipatna (10 cm each).
That Gujarat has come to be subjected to some of the heavy to heaviest rainfall in recent days is a revelation given that no advance forecasts earlier this year gave the western State any chance in the monsoon scheme of things.
And the dire forecast looked to mostly hold in June when the State returned one of the worst deficits thus far. But the situation started to change from July from when the monsoon has revived.
Rain outlook
The Met Department outlook for the next two days is as follows:
Thursday, July 31: Heavy to very rainfall with extremely heavy falls over Chhattisgarh, east Gujarat, Saurashtra, Vidarbha, Konkan-Goa, Odisha, east Madhya Pradesh, Kutch and Madhya Maharashtra.
Heavy rainfall for west Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Telangana, coast and interior Karnataka.
Friday, Aug 1: Heavy to very rainfall with isolated extremely heavy falls over Saurashtra, Kutch, east Gujarat, Konkan-Goa, and Madhya Maharashtra.
Heavy rainfall for Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, east Madhya Pradesh, sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Karnataka and Kerala.