Flooded roads, traffic jams follow rain

LAHORE : Rains continued to cause trouble in the city here Thursday while Met office predicted more rains during the next 24 hours.

Thursday’s rain caused inconvenience to the citizens as rainwater remained stagnant on roads for several hours. It is pertinent to mention here that staff of Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) and City district government left the citizens at the mercy of stagnant rainwater and remained absent from the roads.

Hours long traffic jams were also witnessed on various city roads especially The Mall, Canal Bank Road and Ferozpur Road due to rainwater. Shama Chowk also witnessed worst traffic jams as a big hole had appeared on the road due to a broken underground water supply line some four days back. The Wasa officials failed to repair the fault and rainwater added problems to this part of the road.

Met officials said moderate monsoon currents are penetrating in the country and likely to weaken during next 24 hours. A shallow westerly wave is also still affecting upper parts of the country and likely to move eastwards during next 24 hours. They predicted that mainly hot and humid weather is expected in most parts of the country while more rain-thundershower with gusty winds is expected at isolated places in Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Lahore, Hazara divisions, lower Sindh (Hyderabad, Karachi, Mirpurkhas, Sh. Benazirabad divisions), Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

During the last 24 hours, rainfall was recorded in several cities, including Lahore (City 54mm, Punjab University 24mm, AP 09mm), Islamabad (Saidpur 54mm, Bokra 32mm, ZP 26mm), Rawalpindi (Chaklala 39mm, Shamsabad 06mm), Chakwal 35mm, Kasur 28mm, Sialkot (City 24mm, A/P 20mm), Gujrat 14mm, Gujranwala 09mm, Murree 05mm, Sargodha (PAF 04mm, Cantt 03mm), Mangla 04mm, Faisalabad 03mm, Toba Tek Singh, Shorkot 02mm, Joharabad, Noorpur Thal, Jhang 01mm, Dir 39mm, Lower Dir 33mm, Kohat 21mm, Pattan 14mm, Cherat, Risalpur 09mm, Bannu 08mm, Kalam 07mm, Parachinar, Malam Jabba 06mm, Peshawar (Cantt 04mm, PAF 03mm), Saidu Sharif 03mm, Balakot 02mm, Kotli 39mm, Rawalakot 12mm, Garhi Dupatta 04mm, Karachi Landhi 34mm, North Karachi 33mm, Saddar 25mm, Gulshan-e-Hadid 24mm, A/P, Nazimabad, Model Observatory 23mm, PAF(Masroor) 16mm, PAF (Faisal) 15mm, Badin 12mm, Thatta 08mm, Barkhan 08mm, Zhob 07mm, Bagrote 08mm, Gilgit, Bunji 06mm, Chillas and Astore 03mm. Thursday’s maximum temperature was recorded at Turbat where mercury reached 45°C while in Lahore, minimum temperature dropped to 20.8°C and humidity was 25 percent.