LAHORE, Sept 12: Tarbela and Mangla dams dipped further on Thursday as combined rivers’ flow maintained downwards trend and hit a seasonal low of 144,485 cusecs — 5,665 cusecs less than Wednesday.

With Indus at Tarbela going down to 82,200 cusecs and the outflow increasing to 135,000 cusecs, the dam level went down to 1546.20 feet, housing 6.95 million acre feet of water.

Last week, the dam level stood at 1552 feet and full conservation level was 7.3maf.

The Mangla lake also went down by 1.1 feet with Jhelum reducing supplies to 17,200 cusecs on Thursday and release of water going up to 30,450 cusecs.

The dam level was 1204.90 feet and had storage of 4.828maf. It may suffer a steep decline in its level as the Punjab plans to increase releases to 32,000 cusecs from Friday (today) to compensate decreased supply of water from Chenab, whose flow went down to 25,985 cusecs on Thursday.

The Chenab and Kabul also have hit low base flow of 25,985 and 19,100 cusecs respectively.

According to the barrages report, Jinnah had an inflow of 172,400 and outflow of 164,300 cusecs; Chashma 141,500 and 136,800; Taunsa 142,000 and 113,900; Guddu 164,000 and 136,600; Sukkur 163,300 and 106,800 and Kotri 120,000 and 84,300 cusecs going to the Arabian sea.

According to Pakistan Meteorological Department adviser Abdul Majid, all the rivers have hit the base flow.

“This is a routine decline, but there will be no recovery of flow unless there is substantial rain in catchment areas.

But, the rain effect is very short and temporary, otherwise the river flows have returned to their normal and there does not seem any long-term chances of their betterment,” he said.

“At present, there is some low pressure hovering over Indian province of Upper Pardesh (UP). If this low pressure develops into a depression and travels down to north and north east, there may be some flooding in Pakistan. Otherwise, there might be some routine rain that could provide some temporary relief as far as water supplies are concerned,” he said.