Temperatures fell steeply all over the State following widespread rains at several places along with strong gales on Wednesday, while the depression in the Bay of Bengal now lay 200 km south-east of Kolkata, turned towards Bangladesh.
In its latest bulletin, India Meteorological Department predicted that the South-West monsoon would touch Kerala coast in four days on June 2, late by a day. An IMD official said any further continuance of favourable weather conditions as at present, will ensure its further advancement, ensuring its arrival in Andhra Pradesh a week later on June 9.
The severe summer and accompanying heat wave that boiled the State till the other day, appeared to have to come to a close, going by the continued drop in temperatures and overcast skies. The State’s maximum temperature, which had touched a peak of 47.7 degrees Celsius at Rentachintala, plummeted to 43 C on Wednesday. Devarakonda in Nalgonda district received a rainfall of 6 cm, Utukuru, Pakala each 5 cm, Venkatagiri Kota, Lakkireddypalli, Kollapur, Kalwakurthy 3 cm each, Thamballapalli, Aluru, Dubbak, Sircilla each 2 cm and Yemmiganur, Punganur, Gooty, Pathikonda, Puttur, Ramagundam, Sultanpur, Achampet and Mahabubnagar each 1 cm. The strong winds uprooted trees, electric/telephone poles, snapped wires, and pulled down small and large hoardings at several places. As a result, power supply was off to several areas all over the State while traffic was held up on many roads in Hyderabad and even in front of the Secretariat for more than an hour. Low-lying portions of roads came under water for sometime. Meanwhile, Revenue Minister N. Raghuveera Reddy asked district Collectors to ensure opening of bank accounts by individual farmers whose crops were damaged by Neelam cyclone and drought later during 2012, to enable the Government to deposit the monetary compensation due to them towards input subsidy. He said sum of Rs 1,662 crore had been set aside for the purpose.
