Journalism of Courage
In what may be arguably the first, a tornado-like phenomenon was seen near Nazre dam in Ranmala village of Purandar in Pune district on Saturday evening, catching the local people by surprise. Southwest monsoon has just arrived in Pune and conditions are just about becoming favourable for continuous rain.
Tornadoes are strong wind columns that emanate out of a thunderstorm and extend as conical structures over land.
According to the preliminary observations by a team of city-based experts from the Centre for Citizen Science (CCS), the phenomenon lasted for about 2 minutes and many local people took pictures and recorded videos of the incident.
The team, that included Mayuresh Prabhune, Amey Patwardhan and Mitali Inamdar, visited the spot and interacted with a few local people, and is trying to understand the cause of the first-of-its-kind incident in Maharashtra.
“It raged to a distance of about 1 km and ruffled away a few tin sheets, metal covers over farms but did not cause any serious damage to life or property in the area. The intensity is confirmed to be F0, as per the Fugita scale, which means the wind speed range was 40 to 70 miles/hour,” the primary findings stated.
After the phenomenon was sighted, the area received heavy downpour for about an hour-and-half. The nearest observatory recorded 101mm
of rain.
