Maha: Heavy rain in Mahabaleshwar hill town, Koyna dam level rising

Heavy rains lashed parts of popular hill station Mahabaleshwar and neighboring areas of western Maharashtra and the Konkan region over the last 24 hours, as a result of which the water level of the Koyna dam was going up, officials said on Tuesday.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a 'yellow alert' for Satara district, where Mahabaleshwar and the Koyna dam are located, predicting heavy rains on Tuesday and the next two days at isolated places in some areas of the Western Ghats.

It has also issued an 'orange alert' for Friday, forecasting heavy to very heavy rains in isolated areas of the ghats.

The MeT department issues four color-coded predictions based on the prevailing weather systems. The green color indicates no warning, yellow is to keep a watch, orange is to stay alert, while red means a warning and that action needs to be taken.

An IMD official said there will be vigorous activity in four sub-divisions of the state. ''Konkan-Goa and Ghats of Madhya Maharashtra are likely to get isolated extremely heavy rainfall (20.5 cm or more) in 24 hours,'' the official said. With the improvement in rain activity in the catchment areas of the Koyna dam, its water level is also steadily rising, according to the district disaster control cell.

''Mahabaleshwar received 129 mm rainfall in the last 24 hours, while the Koyna and Navaja dams received 74 mm and 118 mm rainfall, respectively, since Monday,'' an official from the Satara district administration said.

He said that the total capacity of the Koyna dam is 105 TMC (thousand million cubic feet of water). With the rain activity increasing since last week, the dam water level is going up. Till Tuesday morning, the dam had 16 TMC water, which is 15.20 percent of the total capacity, he added.