Thursday, October 27, 2005
Rain, rain and more rain
Chennai is getting a dose of what Mumbai got a couple of months ago. A low pressure area has developed off the coast and is pelting us with a relentless monsoon rain. We've already gotten 27 cm of rain, with more to come. This is still far short of Mumbai (over 90 cm), but the rain is forecast to last another 36-48 hours.
I turned around and came back this morning rather than try to get into work, and we shut the factory down about 11 a.m. Even at 8:00 a.m., at points along the GST road, the water was knee deep. We had to take a detour to get to the house because a tree had fallen in the road. Roads are built right around trees here, and they pave right up to the trunk, so the roots don't get enough water and therefore don't anchor the trees solidly in the ground. More have collapsed since this morning, and a number of roads are blocked.
So far we still have power and internet, but I'm writing this while I can---later on, they're predicting up to 40 mile per hour winds. Power has either been lost or shut down in several points in the city.
This will likely delay our planned trip to Australia --we were scheduled to leave Saturday night. Some flights are still departing Chennai, but all inbound ones are diverted, and the trains are also shut down.