17 July 2004	Saturday	28 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

LAHORE, July 16: The city received the first heavy monsoon rain coupled with a windstorm on Friday morning. The rain started at around 6am, and it inundated almost all city streets during its one-and-a-half hour duration.

The accompanying windstorm not only disrupted power supply, but also levelled many trees and billboards.

The local Met office recorded 45mm of rain at the airport, 65mm at its Jail Road observatory and 23mm in Township. The maximum gust of wind was 82km per hour at the airport and 74km in the main city.

According to it, the rain was caused by a combination of moisture from the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea and the impact of a westerly wave passing from the Northern Areas.

The maximum temperature dropped to 29.7 degrees Celsius and the minimum 22 degrees Celsius with 95 per cent humidity in the morning and 68 per cent in the evening. The Flood Forecasting Division reported rain in many other cities of the Punjab, the NWFP and the Northern Areas.

Kohat received 43mm of rain, Malamjabba 34mm, Sargodha 29mm, Besham 24mm, Rahwali 22mm, Marala 20mm, Nowshera and Mandi Bahauddin 16mm each, Kalam 13mm, Jhelum and Sialkot 12mm each, Attock 10mm, Muzaffarabad 8mm, Sahiwal, Peshawar and Kotli 5mm each, Islamabad 2mm and Murree 1mm.

It predicted scattered rainfall of light to moderate intensity over the upper catchments of all major rivers along with Kohat, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Sargodha and Lahore divisions during the next 24 hours.

However, the first monsoon rain was like a present for the Lahorites who had been braving extremely hot and humid weather during the past 24 hours. And because of the creation of the typical monsoon activity which everyone was missing, it was easy for the people to face the long and repeated power breakdowns.

The people, nevertheless, found it hard to reach their workplaces due to the inundation of streets. Many were seen pushing their cars and motorcycles out of the pools of rainwater.

Traffic remained disrupted on a number of roads with drenched policemen appearing helpless to control it due to the rainwater which was cleared after several hours.