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Chennai district on ‘red’ alert, as trail of Cyclone Ditwah dumps over 200 mm rainfall in 24 hours

The weakened trail of Cyclone Ditwah is expected to move landwards as a low-pressure system by Wednesday morning

2 min readBengaluruDec 2, 2025 01:13 PM IST

Cyclone Ditwah's deep depression moves past Chennai, inviting heavy rainfall in several districts such as Parrys, Enore, Ice House and New Manali Town. (Source: PTI)

Chennai and its surrounding areas experienced heavy rain on the intervening night of Monday and Sunday as the weakened Cyclone Ditwah’s deep depression moved past the Tamil Nadu capital.

Over the past 24 hours, extremely heavy rainfall was recorded in pockets of Chennai, including Parrys (265.3 mm), Ennore (264.3 mm), Ice House (231.3 mm), New Manali town (206.6 mm), and Basin Bridge (207.6 mm). Heavy rainfall was recorded over Vadapalani (180 mm), Kathivakkam (168.3 mm), Manali (186.2 mm), Kasimedu (152.4 mm), Tondiarpet (172.8 mm), Aminjikarai (148.8 mm) and Adyar (140 mm).

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a ‘red’ alert on Tuesday for Chennai and Thiruvalur districts in the north of Tamil Nadu. The Met department Tuesday said the system had further weakened into a depression and, at the same time, had recurved to be positioned over the north Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and south Andhra Pradesh coasts.

The map depicts the cyclone’s path as it moved northwards along in the Coast in Bay of Bengal, with data points outlining it’s position, metrics include wind speed (in knots, KT), status as a cyclonic storm (CS) and deep depression (DD).

“As a depression, it is likely to continue to move slowly southwestwards towards the north Tamil Nadu-Puducherry coasts and maintain its intensity of depression till Tuesday evening,” the IMD said.

As per the 5.30 am satellite observations, the system lay at about 40 km east-southeast of Chennai, 130 km northeast of Puducherry, 150 km north-northeast of Cuddalore and 180 km south-southeast of Nellore. The minimum distance of the centre of the depression from the north Tamil Nadu-Puducherry coasts was about 25 km.

Similar to the slow movement of Cyclone Ditwah, its remnants are moving slowly and weakening more slowly than storms normally do. As a result, the Met department has forecast continued rain over north Tamil Nadu and Puducherry till the end of Tuesday.

Cyclone Ditwah made landfall over eastern Sri Lanka on November 27, causing severe damage, leading to over 300 deaths and hundreds of people missing. Afterwards, it moved west-northwestwards to reach close to the north Tamil Nadu-Puducherry coast.

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