June 16, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 30, 1428

LAHORE, June 15: The first pre-monsoon rain broke the one-week-old spell of extraordinarily hot and later sultry weather on Friday, dropping temperatures by at least 10 degrees Celsius in the length and breadth of the province.

In Lahore, rain sharply dropped mercury and provided a much-needed relief to the people.

The maximum temperature was 29 degrees Celsius as against 40 degrees Celsius on Thursday. It was 48 degrees Celsius last Saturday.

The Met office said the rain in the city and elsewhere in the province was caused by the incursion of extra moisture from the Arabian Sea and a weak westerly moving across the Northern Areas.

The low pressure over north east of Balochistan was accentuated, and the monsoon current from the Arabian Sea was reaching to sub-mountain areas up to 7,000ft, it said, indicating chances of more rain in the province during the next 24 hours.

“This certainly is a pre-monsoon rain. But the actual monsoon current which originates from the Bay of Bengal is yet to reach Pakistan,” a senior meteorologist told Dawn.

Rain in Lahore started at around 6am and continued till noon. At times it was heavy, inundating low-lying areas and many busy roads. By 5pm the Met office had recorded 34mm of rain at its Jail Road observatory and 25mm at the airport.

People who had earlier spent an extremely hot and hot humid night, heaved a sigh of relief. A large number of them, including women and children, bathed in the rain.

A number of families visited city’s parks and other recreational spots in the evening to enjoy the weather.

But, yet again, long power breakdowns robed the citizens of the joy of the pleasant weather in several localities. They wondered as to why electricity became the first victim of any weather change in the country.

Last week, people braved the double agony of hot and later muggy weather coupled with repeated power breakdowns, loadshedding and fluctuations, which made their lives miserable.

Meanwhile, the Met office reported rain in Sialkot 37mm, Sargodha 27mm, Mandi Bahauddin 10mm, Faisalabad 9mm, Jhang 8mm, Mianwali 3mm, Sialkot 2mm and Jhelum 1mm.

It said the rain in Punjab dropped temperatures everywhere, providing a relief to people.

The maximum temperature in Jhelum was 31.5 degrees Celsius, Murree 23.3, Sargodha 30.5, Mianwali 34, Faisalabad 32, Sialkot 29.7, Multan 40.6, Bahawalpur 41.5, Bahawalnagar 38.5, Khanpur 41.5, Dera Ghazi Khan 40, Mandi Bahauddin 29.8, Sahiwal 34.7, Rahim Yar Khan 41.5, Okara 34.5 and Jhang 34 degrees Celsius.

The minimum temperature in Lahore was 22.6 degrees Celsius with 83 per cent humidity in the morning and 22.6 per cent in the evening.