June 19 2015 Rainfall Event Over Mumbai: Some Observational Analysis

Abstract

Some of the major metropolitan centers in the world are highly susceptible to flash floods and major disruptions, owing to sudden and excessive rainfall events. The city of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, suffered one such event on 19 June, 2015. This was a second event of such nature, following the landmark event of 26 July, 2005. Such extreme rainfall events are often brought about by certain rapidly developing, local disturbances, which if actively monitored, may be provide important information that can be of great use for early warning to civic authorities and emergency planners. In this paper, we have analyzed a number of different meteorological and remotely sensed parameters, a few days before the actual event, to track the development and eventual culmination of a “perfect storm” that affected Mumbai and left the city tattered. We show how regional upper layer disturbance patterns are developed, induced by warming of sea-surface temperature (SST) and sustained by instability in the atmospheric boundary layers to quickly develop into massive cyclonic storms.