Heavy flood to Jurala likely for a week

Discharge of water to Srisailam is about 2.2 lakh cusecs

A view of the Jurala reservoir discharging flood water.

With heavy rains in the catchment areas of Krishna and its tributaries in Maharashtra and Karnataka forecast to be continued for the next 2-3 days, although with reduced intensity, the heavy flood to Jurala and Srisailam is expected to continue for at least one week.

The heavy flood is expected to improve the water storage in Srisailam considerably as the Central Water Commission has forecast that it is likely to receive a flood of about 8.4 tmc ft in 12 hours from 6 pm on Saturday to 6 am on Sunday as the inflows are set to go up to over 1.94 lakh cusecs. Jurala is likely to get nearly 10 tmc ft water during the same period with the inflow forecast of over 2.26 lakh cusecs.

According to the Central Water Commission (CWC) forecast, Narayanapur is likely to receive nearly 9.6 tmc ft of flood in 12 hours from 8 pm on Saturday to 8 am on Sunday with inflows in the range of 2.22 lakh cusecs and Tungabhadra dam expected to get nearly 5 tmc ft water with inflows of about 1.13 lakh cusecs. As Tungabhadra dam is only half full, any spillway discharge is ruled out for the next 7-10 days even in case of the continued flood in the current measure.

As of Saturday night (9 pm), nearly 1.96 lakh cusecs of flood was being discharged from the 28 spillway gates of Jurala and 22,000 cusecs from the power house. However, the realisation of flood at Srisailam in that measure is likely to happen only from the wee hours of Sunday, flood monitoring officials said, adding that the actual inflows into the common reservoir of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was about 1.74 lakh cusecs at 9 pm on Saturday.

The CWC has advised the authorities of major reservoirs in the Krishna basin to maintain close watch for increased inflows over the next 2-3 days. According to a CWC bulletin, 8.9 cm rain was recorded in Koyna catchment area in 24 hours preceding 8.30 am on Saturday. Similarly, it was 7.5 cm in Warana, the catchment area of Warna dam, and 7.2 cm in the catchment area of Krishna river – Mahabaleshwar and these areas are forecast to get good rains for the next 4-5 days.

In the Godavari basin, flood at Laxmi (Medigadda) barrage was around 1.41 lakh cuses with forecast of further increase.