After Bhima, a major tributary of the Krishna, it appears to be the turn of the Tungabhadra, another major tributary, to keep the main river course in spate in the upstream of Srisailam project, as the Central Water Commission (CWC) has forecast discharge of heavy flood from Tungabhadra dam over the next couple of days with extremely heavy rainfall in the catchment areas.
An extremely heavy rainfall of 22.4 cm was recorded in the 24-hour period till 8.30 a.m. on Sunday in Augumbe area, the catchment area of Tungabhadra river.
“Heavy to very heavy rainfall with isolated extremely heavy rainfall occurred in Upper Tungabhadra Basin, leading to heavy inflows in Upper Tunga and Bhadra dams, and the excess flood is being released to Tungabhadra dam downstream,” flood monitoring officials said.
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As a result, the authorities at Tungabhadra dam have started increasing the outflows on Sunday evening and they were around 57,600 cusecs against the inflows of 28,300 cusecs. In the morning, release of water to the river course from the dam was barely 3,000 cusecs.
“The inflows from Bhadra and Tunga dams and intermediate catchment put together is about 1.4 lakh cusecs and it’s likely to reach Tungabhadra dam by 11 a.m. on Monday and any further rain will add some more discharge. As the reservoir is almost full, the CWC has advised pre-depletion by increasing the spillway release gradually up to 1.2 lakh cusecs by 10 a.m. on Monday,” Tungabhadra dam engineers stated.
According an advisory of the CWC, river Tungabhadra is likely to rise in the Middle and Lower Tungabhadra Sub-Basins in Ballari, Koppal and Raichur districts in Karnataka, and Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh. “This is likely to give additional inflows into Srisailam dam in addition to the increase in the flows forecast in Upper Krishna and Upper Bhima Sub-Basins,” the officials said.
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Due to continuing rainfall in the north interior Karnataka and Telangana, river Bhima is rising in Kalaburagi district of Karnataka and is flowing in above normal flood situation. Against the danger level of 404.5 meters, the river flow at Deongaon bridge in Kalaburagi district was nearly 403 meters and rising on Sunday night. Its will bring additional inflows into Jurala project in Jogulamba-Gadwal district.
At 8 p.m. on Sunday, the inflows into Jurala were 1.6 lakh cusecs and that into Srisailam were nearly 3.04 lakh cusecs, including supplementation from Tungabhadra and Handri rivers. The outflow to river at the two projects was 1.5 lakh cusecs and 2.5 lakh cusecs, respectively. The discharge of flood to river at Nagarjunasagar was 2.38 lakhs at 8 pm.
Godavari Basin
With discharge of excess flood at Mula, Manjlegaon, Jaikwadi and Yeldari dams in Upper Godavari Basin in Maharashtra, inflows into Sriramsagar project (SRSP) are expected to increase further. As of Sunday evening, the inflows and outflows there were nearly 1.47 lakh cusecs. With supplementation of flood from Lower Manair dam, the inflows at Yellampally barrage were nearly 1.8 lakh cusecs. The flood at Medigadda barrage is forecast to rise to 2.7 lakh cusecs by Monday morning.
Meanwhile, the inflows into Singur and Nizamsagar projects have come down to over 6.100 cusecs and 1,400 cusecs on Sunday evening as they storage crossed 17 tmc ft and 5 tmc ft, respectively.