Nagpur: The Second Capital of Maharashtra is witnessing frequent power cuts during any time of the day. While earlier the blame rested with heatwave, now the pre-monsoon disturbance is the reason for this power shutdowns.
Last night, following gusty winds accompanied by lightning and mild rain in the city, several areas plunged into darkness. Before the arrival of monsoon, the city annually witnesses heavy wind flow that hits the overhead power network. Early in the morning the rains started in the city but before that for nearly half an hour there was lightning and heavy winds blowing. Due to rains citizens did not feel much inconvenience as the mercury dipped considerably during the night time. People said, after lights went out they tried to reach out to the nearest sub-station but with the facility of complaints now centralised, the only option was to dial the MSEDCL’s helpline numbers.
In fact, in a run up to pre-monsoon activity, the current heatwave is testing the MSEDCL machinery and manpower to their limits. Daily power-cuts are occurring across the city and most of the faults are attributed by powermen to underground cables. Tracing the fault in underground cable is a time consuming task and hence citizens had to sweat it out in the heat and bear with inconvenience, and also miss out on sound night sleep.
Mercury drops:
Mild showers and thunderstorms on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday brought the mercury down to bearable levels across Vidarbha. While maximum temperature dropped by a couple of degrees, minimum temperature witnessed drastic fall.
Nagpur, on Thursday, recorded the maximum temperature of 39.0 degrees Celsius, which was 4.2 degrees below normal. This was a sudden dip of 2.8 degrees in just 24 hours. Similarly, the minimum temperature of Nagpur was 24.9 degrees Celsius on Thursday.
The minimum temperature of the city took a steep fall of 6.5 degrees Celsius in just 24 hours. Bramhapuri recorded the highest 20.8 mm rainfall on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday. Wardha also recorded a rainfall of 1.2 mm. Wardha also recorded the highest dip by 8.9 degrees Celsius of minimum temperature in 24 hours.
Bramhapuri experienced 7.5 degrees dip, Yavatmal recorded 4.5 degrees, Chandrapur recorded 4 degrees and Gondia 2.4 degrees. Akola recorded the highest minimum temperature at 31.4 degrees Celsius on Thursday.
