The city and other parts of the district continued to receive good, intermittent rain on Wednesday bringing down the temperature. The rain in Siruvani catchments and the resultant inflow also saw water continuously overflowing from the Siruvani Reservoir on Wednesday.The rainfall recorded in the 24 hours that ended 8 a.m. Wednesday for Peelamedu stood at 11.50 mm, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University 27 mm and Coimbatore South 20 mm. Cincona saw maximum rainfall – 170 mm, followed by Chinnakalar 166 mm, Valparai (PAP area) 136 mm and Valparai Taluk Office 135 mm.
This brought down the maximum and minimum temperature for the city, says S. Panneerselvam, Head, Agro Climate Research Centre, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. “The lowest maximum temperature recorded in the city in July was on Tuesday – 26 degree C. The lowest minimum temperature was on Tuesday – 21 degree C.”
He says the rainfall in the current South West Monsoon season has also been good. The rainfall received in June this year was 54 mm as against the average rainfall of 42.8 mm. Thus far in July, the district has received 36 mm. The average rainfall for the month is 69 mm.
Mr. Panneerselvam says the rainfall will continue for the next few days and the sky will mostly remain cloudy.
Another interesting feature this South West Monsoon has been that the wind speed has been more than the normal. The wind speed this month averaged around 18 kmph, while the average wind speed is around 14 kmph.
Meanwhile, Coimbatore Corporation and Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board officials say that water continues to overflow from the Siruvani Reservoir. “Since Tuesday 10 a.m., the water is overflowing and it continues on Wednesday as well,” says an officer on condition of anonymity.
In the 24 hours that ended 8 a.m. Wednesday, the Siruvani Reservoir recorded 143 mm and the foothills 67 mm.
The water level in the Reservoir, whose full reservoir level is 49.50 feet, has been around 45.50 feet from July 1 to 9. On July 10, the water level jumped to 49.86 feet and it has been overflowing ever since.
Water stagnation
In the city, the intermittent rain resulted in water stagnation at the Kikani and Kaleeswara Mill railway underpasses. The Corporation officials say they flushed out water on Wednesday morning. The automatic motor on Avinashi Road underpass also worked for a while to flush out water.
Though the level of water that stagnated was not high and vehicles moved from one side to another, the civic body did operate the motors to ease vehicle movement. The officials also say that there was no incident of flooding or inundation in the city on Tuesday-Wednesday.
Protest
There was also some rain-related protest in the city. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam conducted a sapling planting protest on Puttuvikki Road, complaining that the condition of the road that was rebuilt only two months had turned for the worse with potholes.
S. Muthusamy, a DMK functionary, who led the protests, says the road was declared open only 10 days ago to facilitate diversion of traffic from Ukkadam-Athupalam. But the quality has been so bad that there are potholes and road users are falling due to potholes.