Heavy rains, accompanied by gusty winds of upto 70 kmph, lashed #Mumbai city and suburbs, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), and coastal Konkan for the second consecutive day on Wednesday, hitting suburban train services and disrupting normal life, officials said.
(📸:IANS)
In a rare development, many parts of south Mumbai like Churchgate, Marine Lines, Marine Drive, Kalbadevi, Dongri, Byculla, Mazagaon, Parel, Dadar and surroundings witnessed heavy waterlogging, throwing the central business district out of gear.
Central Railway (CR) suburban train services were suspended between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) and Kurla on the main line, and CSMT and Vashi on the Harbour Line after the heavy downpour, said CR spokesperson Shivaji Sutar.
At the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, over half a dozen flights had to do a go-around before coming in, but there were no diversions or cancellations, said officials.
Major landmarks like the Bombay Stock Exchange's (BSE) Phiroze Jeejeebhoy Tower suffered the brunt of the rain fury when its massive signboard on the 29th floor got ripped off and hung precariously.
Some sections of a cement cladding adorning the exteriors of the Jaslok Hospital in south Mumbai were blown off and fell in pieces on the road below, but there were no reports of any casualties.
Two persons suffered injuries in a minor house crash in Bhandup, while there were more than 150 incidents of tree crashes in the city, and 10 incidents of electric short-circuits, but no fatalities.
Huge traffic snarls were witnessed in south Mumbai with trees falling on some roads in Churchgate, Marine Lines, Charni Road, and Worli, hitting vehicular traffic on the Eastern and the Western Express Highways.
With thousands of commuters getting stranded, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Wednesday evening said that it had made arrangements for people at 130 civic schools outside the major railway stations.
Heavy rains also lashed the adjoining coastal districts of Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg, besides downpours in Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli, and Pune since the past 24 hours.
Amid apprehensions of a 2005-like flood situation, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray reviewed the monsoon situation, and the state government has rushed 15 disaster relief teams for Mumbai, Thane, Palghar, Satara, Sangli and Kolhapur to help in any contingency.
#MumbaiRains | Mumbai's #Colaba monitoring station registered 252 mm rain on Monday and 332 mm on Wednesday. Overall, #Colaba has received more than 600 mm rainfall in the first six days of August—more than Mumbai's overall August rainfall quota of 585 mm.
While searching for life in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers pulled out a new bizarre-looking species of isopod, whose head resembles the Darth Vader from Star Wars!
This new-found crustacean, named Bathonymus yucatanensis, has 14 legs and is around 26 cm long — approximately 25 times larger than its closest relative, the common woodlouse.
While these blonde creatures seem pretty scary, the "Vanilla Vaders" are, in fact, harmless to humans.
Their huge size is only due to deep-sea gigantism — a phenomenon wherein ocean dwellers grow bigger than their terrestrial relatives due to lack of sunlight.
This super-Earth is a rocky world, on which a year is equal to just 11 Earth days.
The short orbit is down to the red dwarfs being a lot smaller than the Sun that centres our solar system. But the smaller sizes also make their gravitational fields less expansive than the Sun's.
Therefore, Ross 508b revolves around its red dwarf at a distance of just 5 million km. Mercury, in comparison, is about 60 million km from the Sun.
The short distance between this super-Earth & its red dwarf begs the question: how could it possibly be habitable?
#Japan is making grand plans of creating interplanetary #trains and champagne flute-like glass habitats in its bid to send and host humans on the #Moon and #Mars!
An interplanetary transportation system dubbed the 'Hexatrack', which maintains a gravity of 1G during long-distance travel to mitigate the effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity, has been proposed by #Japanese researchers.
The #trains will also possess 'Hexacapsules', which are essentially hexagon-shaped capsules with a moving device in the middle.
In 2012, the almost-complete skeleton of a new kind of #dinosaur was found in the northern Patagonia region of #Argentina.
The dinosaur has been christened #Meraxes gigas. The generic epithet is an ode to a dragon in the #GameOfThrones series.
Standing at the height of 11 m (36 ft) and weighing roughly 4000 kgs, the #dinosaur sported several crests, bumps and horns on its skull, which lent it a menacing appearance.
But the highlight of the findings is that the dinosaur had teeny-tiny arms, just like the #Trex!
Dr Jose, along with an international research team from the US, UK and Australia, will be examining the Galactic Centre Cloud (GCC) — the central molecular zone of our Milky Way — in April 2023.
They have been allotted 27.3 hours over the access period of 12 months.