LAHORE, July 13: Torrential rain in Lahore on Thursday, which continued intermittently till night, inundated scores of localities, especially the low-lying areas, disrupting traffic for hours.

The rain started around 9:30am and it submerged streets all over the city in just 25 minutes. The short burst of heavy rainfall was accompanied with strong wind, having a velocity of 60km per hour.

The meteorological office recorded 47mm rain at its Jail Road observatory and 57mm at the airport. The total rain by 5pm recorded at these places was 49mm and 59mm, and it was still raining till the filing of this report.

The rain and cloudy weather reduced the maximum temperature from Wednesday’s 34.3 degrees Celsius to 29.2 degrees C. The minimum temperature was 23.8 degrees C with 85 per cent humidity in the morning and 83 per cent in the evening.

“This was the heaviest rainfall in Lahore during the month. The city has now received a total of 60mm rain as against the 212mm average rainfall of the month. We expect more heavy rain during the remaining days of July,” chief meteorologist Shaukat Awan said.

The rain, however, created a lot of problems for the people in the shape of frequent power disruptions and short water supply. Travelling on inundated roads was nothing short of an ordeal for the motorists.

Late arrivals at offices and power disruptions affected work a great deal and business activity, too, slowed down in markets mainly because of the inundation of roads around them. The rainwater could not be cleared off several places like Laxmi Chowk, The Mall, Nabha Road, Old Anarkali, Multan Road from Chauburji to Samanabad Morr, Bhati Gate, Misri Shah and Gulberg.

Mr Awan said the rain was caused by the converging of accentuated monsoon seasonal low over Balochistan, strong current of moisture from the Arabian Sea, and a westerly wave.

“We are lucky that there is no monsoon activity from the Bay of Bengal, otherwise it would have caused widespread flooding in the entire Punjab,” he said.

He said the focus of converging point was from Islamabad to Jhelum where it gave torrential rain during the previous night and early on Thursday. The peripheries of the converging point gave rain in the upper NWFP, Kashmir and northern Punjab, including Lahore. In some cities the rain was accompanied with thunderstorms because of the impact of the westerly wave.

He said there were flash flows in the upper catchments of the Jhelum and Chenab. As a result, the level of Mangla Dam arose by two feet and of Tarbela by seven feet, which was by far the highest so far.

Mr Awan said the weather pattern was likely to continue for another 48 hours, though the system would gradually lose its strength. There might be more heavy rainfall in northern Punjab particularly in the hilly tracks that might result in the flooding of storm water channels in Sialkot region like Bein, Basantar and Palkhu.

Meanwhile, the Met office has reported 119mm rain in Jhelum from 8am to 5pm on Thursday. Kotli received 61mm rain, Mandi Bahauddin (54mm), Sialkot (44mm), Muzaffarabad (27mm), Dir (26mm), Islamabad airport (27mm), Balakot (20mm) and Sargodha (12mm).

It has forecast widespread rain and thunderstorm in Rawalpindi and Gujranwala divisions and scattered thunderstorm in Lahore, Faisalabad and Sargodha divisions during the next 24 hours.