Flooding in New Dehli

[Coast]

 

Rain fury: Death toll mounts to 73, over 73,000 stranded

 

NEW DELHI: Rain fury claimed 11 more lives on Tuesday in the north, taking the toll to 73, even as 71,440 pilgrims bound for the Himalayan shrines remained stranded in monsoon-ravaged Uttarakhand apart from 1700 people stuck in Himachal Pradesh.

 

Though rescue efforts picked up momentum in flash flood and landslide hit areas of Himachal and Uttarakhand with a let up in the rain and decrease in water level in the Ganga and its tributaries, the whole of Uttarakhand still wore a marooned and devastated look. Flashfloods, cloudbursts and subsequent landslips have claimed 44 lives in Uttarakhand, left as many injured and fully damaged 175 houses across the state.

 

Rudraprayag was the worst hit where 20 people perished and 73 building including 40 hotels along the banks of the Alaknanda were swept away by the swirling waters of the river. A huge number of pilgrims totalling 71,440, who were bound for the Himalayan shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri are stranded in Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Uttarkashi districts with the famous char dham yatra still suspended due to massive damage to the road network.

 

The maximum number of 27040 devotees are stranded in Chamoli, 25000 in Rudraprayag and 9,850 in Uttarkashi, Disaster Management authorities said. Officials said water level of Bhagirathi in Uttarkashi and Ganga in Rishikesh had begun to recede.

 

In Himachal Pradesh, chief minister Virbhadra Singh, who was stranded in tribal Kinnaur district for nearly 60 hours due to landslides triggered by incessant rains, was evacuated on Tuesday morning even as 1700 people remained stranded at various places. A chopper hired by Congress party airlifted the chief minister as rain abated and weather cleared on Tuesday morning and about a dozen persons, including some old and ailing persons were brought to Rampur in the state helicopter, officials said.

 

In Uttar Pradesh, four persons were killed in rain-related incidents even as the state government issued a high alert in the wake of unexpected increase in discharge in major rivers including Ganga, Yamuna and Shrada.

 

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Rain-fury-Death-toll-mounts-to-73-over-73000-stranded/articleshow/20645138.cms

 

[Coast]

 

Toll in Uttarakhand climbs to 207; over 50,000 still stranded

 

DEHRADUN: The terrible magnitude of nature's fury continued to unfold in Uttarakhand today where 40 bodies of flood victims were found, taking the toll in the disaster to 207 even as rescue workers raced to evacuated over 9000 stranded in Kedarnath and Badrinath.

 

The toll was expected to rise as Uttarakhand principal secretary Rakesh Sharma said casualty figures can be "shockingly high". Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said in Delhi that, "So far, 207 people have lost their lives. But the toll may go up as debris in many areas is yet to be cleared". 50,000 people were still stranded in different inaccessible parts of Uttarakhand, he said. In Haridwar, 40 bodies of those killed in the flash floods and incessant rains have been found. "40 bodies have been recovered from different points along the Ganga since last evening and taken to the district hospital where each of them is being given a number and an identification tag," Senior Superintendent of Police Haridwar Rajeev Swaroop said.

 

An equal number of bodies are likely to be recovered soon from different areas located along the banks of the Ganga in the holy city, Swaroop said. Citing difficulties in conducting the autopsy of so many bodies with limited facilities available, the official said additional teams of doctors have been requisitioned for the purpose. Rescuers were focusing on rain-ravaged Kedarnath area where 250 people are stranded before shifting focus to Badrinath where 9000 people are stuck, officials said.

 

Terming it as the "worst tragedy of the millennium", Agriculture Minister Harak Singh Rawat said, "It will take us at least five years to recover from the extensive damages caused to the entire infrastructure network in the Kedarnath area which is the worst affected". Rawat, who had visited the Kedarnath area, said that he spent five hours there and was shocked to see the extent of the damage caused to the buildings and area adjoining the shrine.

 

"The centre of faith has turned into a burial ground. Bodies are scattered in the area. Only the sanctum sanctorum is intact," he said. Thousands of people were still said to be stranded in various parts of the state that was hit by cloudburst and floods in the upper reaches that left several hundreds of homes, rest houses and buildings in ruins and thousands of people missing. In Himachal Pradesh, rescue operations were on to evacuate stranded people in rain-hit Kinnaur district with two dedicated choppers pressed into service even as reports of more people stuck in interior Pooh, Nako and Kaza areas poured in.

 

Two IAF choppers and one state chopper had been deployed for evacuating the stranded but one chopper has developed some problem. "So far over 550 people have been airlifted but the number is steadily increasing with reports of more people struck at different places, pouring in.Helicopter sorties have also been planned for Pooh, Nako, Kaza and other interior places," officials said.

 

 

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Toll-in-Uttarakhand-climbs-to-207-over-50000-still-stranded/articleshow/20700043.cms

 

[nitro_deluxe]

Some unbelievable rainfall totals, take a look at precip history in for eg Mumbai / Santacruz AP? all this before the official monsoon season usually begins!

Sunday 16th June they received nearly 150mm worth!

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/weather/maps/city?LANG=en&PLZ=_____&PLZN=_____&WMO=43003&ART=PRE&CONT=asie&R=310&LEVEL=150&REGION=0024&LAND=II&NOREGION=1&MOD=&TMX=&TMN=&SON=&PRE=&MONAT=&OFFS=&SORT=

Edited June 23, 2013 by triple_x1

[Methuselah]

Poor people! 

[nitro_deluxe]

According to that graph..Mumbai has had app 800mm since around this time last week? To think we have the audacity to grumble sometimes..

[Gray-Wolf]

We have an atmosphere able to hold 6% more moisture than pre- industrialisation levels? That has both warming and precipitation impacts.

 

This is yet another terrible example of the extremes we now see around the planet and no amount of 'it's all happened before' will convince me that the forcings humanity has placed into the climate system does not bring with it an augmentation to such instances.

Edited June 23, 2013 by Gray-Wolf

[Jax]

According to that graph..Mumbai has had app 800mm since around this time last week? To think we have the audacity to grumble sometimes..

"grumble"

[Coast]

 

India floods: Unusual weather systems clash was trigger

 

An unusually intensive fusion of two weather systems from opposite directions triggered this week's devastating floods in northern India and western Nepal, authorities have said. They say the monsoon advancing towards the west of South Asia combined with westerly winds for an unusually long time and with an extraordinary intensity, which resulted in days of torrential rains.

 

Weather authorities in India and Pakistan have warned there is still a threat that the dangerous combination will cause more devastating floods. At least 560 people are known to have been killed and thousands are missing in northern India. The death toll is expected to rise further. The worst-affected areas are in India's Uttarakhand state, where floods have flattened homes and swept away roads and bridges.More than 40,000 people, many of them Hindu pilgrims, are still stranded in what the government has described as a "national crisis."

 

Single phenomenon?

 

"Such interaction (between the two weather systems) does happen at times during this season but the intensity this time and the duration is something we have not seen for quite some time," BP Yadav, director at the Indian Meteorological Department, told the BBC. The interaction lasted three days he said, the first such event for many years. In Pakistan, experts said the westerly weather system arrived unexpectedly and had covered almost all of the country. Qamar Zaman Chaudry, former director general of Pakistan's Meteorological Department, said this was highly unusual at this time of the year - the first occasion in 26 years. He said May and June normally represented the dry season in Pakistan, with monsoon rains from July to September. More than 33,000 have been rescued over the past several days

 

"The westerly weather system should be here only between October and April, but - quite bizarrely - we are seeing it at this time of the year and all over the country: from the Himalayan mountains to the coastal zones." Mr Chaudry said the cause was unknown, adding: "It is difficult for us to link this single phenomenon to climate change." But he added: "When we look at the abrupt changes in the climate and weather patterns in our country during the last 10 to 15 years, it becomes easy to link this to the changes taking place around the globe."

 

Bill Hare, visiting professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, agreed that it was an intensive interaction between monsoon and westerly winds that resulted into the torrential rainfall. "But the question is: is this intensity of interaction and resulting rainfall in any way linked to global warming? "In this specific event, we simply don't know but what we do know with a high degree of confidence is that these kinds of events, as a general statement, will be occurring more often in the future and will be more damaging as the globe warms. "I think that's a fairly solid analysis from the physical science community," Prof Hare said. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, in its fourth assessment report, says that it "is likely that warming associated with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will cause an increase of Asian summer monsoon precipitation variability". "Changes in the monsoon mean duration and strength depend on the details of the greenhouse gases emission scenario."

 

Debates continue on whether global warming has any role on the changing rainfall patterns around the world, but soot and urban smog pollution have also been blamed for disrupting the south Asian monsoon. A report by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation in 2011 said: "They disturb tropical rainfall and regional circulation patterns such as the Asian monsoon, affecting the livelihoods of millions of people. "They can change wind patterns by affecting the regional temperature contrasts that drive the winds, influencing where rain and snow fall." Experts, however, say not much is known about why westerly winds reach the South Asian region when they are not supposed to. "That is still an area which is still pretty unclear scientifically," says Prof Hare. "But anything that brings a lot of moisture into the region and interacts with the convective energy of the monsoon will probably contribute to more extreme rainfall events."

 

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-23017276

[Coast]

 

Rescuers race to save India flood survivors

 

Rescuers in northern India are making a concerted push to bring down 7,000 people still stranded in the mountains after flash floods and landslides. Air force officials say they need to get to the mountains urgently as time is running out for survivors. In Uttarakhand state, where the death toll is expected to pass 1,000, there was more rain on Monday with further downpours predicted.

 

The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder said there had been fresh land slides in some areas making it difficult for rescue teams.

 

 

Video here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23030549

[Weathobs]

Thats intense!