Heavy rains drenched most of Tamil Nadu on Tuesday night, prompting the government in nine districts, including Chennai, to close schools as a precautionary measure.
Heavy rain poured on Monday and Tuesday in northern districts such as Chennai, Kanchipuram, Chengalpattu, and Villupuram, as well as Tiruvarur and Mayiladuthurai in the Cauvery Delta region and others in southern Tamil Nadu.
The rains are expected to continue till November 3 as the North-east Monsoon (NEM) is in full swing, according to the MeT department. The NEM is Tamil Nadu's lifeline since the state receives the most rainfall between October and January.
As rains continued to fall in numerous parts of the state, school administrations in nine districts – Chennai, Kanchipuram, Chengalpattu, Villupuram, Tiruvannamalai, Ariyalur, Perambalur, Cuddalore, and Mayiladuthurai – declared school shut downs, for classes 1 to 8 reopening only on Monday.
Chennai has received a lot of rain in the last several days, even as reservoirs that supply drinking water to the city's residents are quickly filling up. Last year's healthy monsoon guaranteed that the city did not go dry this summer, as it did in 2019, when Chennai residents faced the greatest water crisis in recent memory.
In Chennai, a 34-year-old police officer was killed when a tree fell on her at the Secretariat, the Tamil Nadu government's seat of power. M K Stalin expressed his condolences for her demise and gave a solatium of Rs.25 lakh to her family.
The MeT has predicted heavy rain in the Cauvery Delta region, Cuddalore, Pudukkottai, Ramanathapuram, Madurai, and Kanyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu, as well as in Puducherry and Karaikal, on Tuesday, while thunderstorms with light to moderate rain are also expected in most places across interior Tamil Nadu.
According to MeT, Marakkanam in the Villupuram district received 20 cm of rain in the past 24 hours, which ended at 8.30 a.m. on Tuesday. The Stanley Reservoir in Mettur was rapidly filling up due to the discharge of extra water from dams in Karnataka, where heavy rains were falling in the Cauvery watershed districts.
The dam's water level was 111.68 feet, compared to the Full Reservoir Level (FRL) of 120 feet, and the water storage was 80 tmcft. The reservoir received 10,858 cusecs of inflow.
