Rains bring precious water but dampen festivity

CHENNAI: A day that should have brought Chennaiites out on the streets, bursting crackers and lighting lamps, inste­ad saw most of them confined to their homes or cautiously carrying umbrellas and wading through knee-deep water, thanks to incessant rains. A robust start to the North-East monsoon on Tuesday gave the state much-needed water, but dampened the Deepavali spirit and inundated the roads.  “Though our office is closed only on Wednesday, many colleagues found the roads hard to commute on Tuesday morning. So almost all of us opted to work from home,” said a senior engineer of a software company on Rajiv Gandhi Salai, Taramani. Traffic snarls were a common sight—especially near Gemini flyover and Kotturpuram, Guindy and Santhom­e junctions. “We were stranded for more than half an hour between T Nagar and Anna Flyover. By evening, however, most of the water had drained and traffic had come down,” said Ravi, an engineer.The thundershowers that lashed the city from Monday night till Tuesday afternoon gave hope, however, that the state would bridge the rainfall deficit for the month. “There was a nine per cent deficit in rainfall in the state—at least 15 mm less—compared to the usual figures with regard to October. We now hope the rainfall in the next three days will make up for it,” said Dr Y E A Raj, de­puty director general of Meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai. In the city, Anna University and DGP office weather stations noted 3 cm of rainfall each, while Meenambakkam received 4 cm and Nun­gambakkam got 2 cm.