Enhanced rainfall activity likely to continue in Bengal today: Met

According to the weather forecast, thunderstorm with lightning and widespread light to moderate rainfall is very likely to occur over the districts of West Bengal till Thursday.

Weather office has issued heavy rainfall warning for North Bengal. Orange warning has been issued predicting heavy to very Heavy rainfall (07-20 cm) at one or two places over Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar and Alipurduar districts.

Yellow Warning has been issued with prediction of Heavy rain (07-11 cm) at one or two places over Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts of North Bengal.

“Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Alipurduar are likely to receive extremely heavy rainfall till Wednesday morning and downpour till Thursday,” said officials.

On Tuesday till 8:30 am Jhalong in Kalimpong received maximum rainfall in 24 hours with 200 mm rainfall in 24 hours followed by Darjeeling which received 170 mm rainfall.

Meanwhile, incessant rainfall in North Bengal has caused landslides at various places disrupting traffic movement.

“There is a major landslide at 29 mile (NH10) which may take long to clear. Goods vehicles should not take that route from Siliguri until further orders. Small vehicles shall be diverted from Coronation Bridge, Teesta, and Rungpo,” tweeted Siliguri Police Commissionerate.
The Siliguri Police Commissionerate has issued an advisory in view of the adverse weather forecast and asked everyone to avoid non-essential travel ‘as much as possible’.

As per sources, one person was killed after a tree fell on a vehicle in Algarah in Kalimpong due to heavy rainfall.

While flight operations remained almost normal, a few flights – at least six – to North Bengal were cancelled.

“Flight operations are normal with slight delays. Due to bad weather at Bagdogra AirIndia and GoAir flights from Delhi, AirAsia from Bangalore & Indigo from Guwahati were diverted to CCU. However they are now airborne. Also due to bad weather of Bagdogra today, several flights got cancelled,” said an official of Kolkata airport.

Kolkata airport witnessed chaos due to sudden cancellation of flight. Several passengers accused private airlines of not informing them timely.

“I had a flight to Gangtok at 11 pm which got cancelled at the last moment then I was suppose to fly to Bagdogra at 3pm which also got cancelled. Worst was we kept waiting till 5:30 pm and there were no proper communication from the spice Jet people. They later informed us that they will refund our money in ten days as flight got cancelled. We had planned for a family holiday and now we don’t know what to do. We are stuck here at the airport for several hours now. Infact we got our luggage in wet condition,” Aakancha Gupta told express over phone. Other passengers too alleged travel harrassment due to bad weather.

Spice Jet had however alerted it’s passenger on its twitter handle at around 9:18 in the morning.

“Due to bad weather in Bagdogra (IXB), all departures/arrivals and their consequential flights may get affected. Passengers are requested to keep a check on their flight status,” read a message on the airline’s official Twitter handle.