Heavy rain causes trouble in Ludhiana; road collapse creates a 20-foot-deep gap.
Punjab woke up to heavy downpours on Thursday, with Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Mohali bearing the brunt of the rainfall since early morning. The deluge triggered a major road cave-in at Rishi Nagar in Ludhiana, where a 30-foot stretch gave way, leaving behind a gaping pit nearly 20 feet deep and raising concerns over the structural safety of buildings in the vicinity.
The rain also wreaked havoc in Patiala's Model Town, where an electronics showroom's basement flooded, causing one of its walls to cave in. Fortunately, no one was inside the premises when the wall came down.
With more rain on the cards, the Chandigarh Meteorological Department has sounded a heavy rainfall alert across seven districts — Pathankot, Hoshiarpur, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr), Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar, Patiala and SAS Nagar (Mohali). Chandigarh itself is likely to see partly cloudy skies through the day.
Weather officials have also flagged the possibility of isolated spells of light rain or thunderstorms at a few locations. Meanwhile, the maximum temperature climbed by 2.1 degrees Celsius, edging closer to normal levels, with Bathinda recording the state's highest temperature at 39.2 degrees Celsius.
The rainfall trend had already picked up a day earlier — Barnala logged the season's highest single-day rainfall of 12 mm on August 5, followed by Amritsar (6 mm), Gurdaspur (2 mm), and Fatehgarh Sahib and Ludhiana (1.5 mm each). Pathankot, by contrast, received only a trace of rainfall.
Explaining the weather pattern, Meteorological Department Director Surinder Pal said a monsoon trough is currently active over northern India, even as the residual impact of a western disturbance lingers. Compounding this, a low-pressure system has developed over Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, pushing up humidity levels across Punjab and Chandigarh.
Officials warned that this combination of weather systems is likely to bring light to moderate rain, thunderstorms, and heavy spells at isolated pockets across both regions over the next 24 hours.
