By Express News Service CHENNAI: It was a pleasant surprise for the water-starved Chennaiites on Monday evening. An intense spell of rainfall lashed several parts of city, especially the western parts such as Ambattur, Mogappair, Ayapakkam and Poonamallee. Some areas have received close to 50 mm of rainfall. Nungambakkam weather station has recorded 26 mm of rainfall. S Balachandran, Deputy Director-General of Meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC), said these were convective rains and, if lucky, Chennai would receive more rains during next three days. “Rainfall would occur mostly during late evening and night.” This comes at a time when Chennai has been facing a historic water crisis forcing the State government to bring potable water though train to augment city water supply. The city is currently reeling under 44 per cent deficit rainfall. Between June 1 and July 15, Chennai has received 65.5 mm of rainfall as against normal 117.2 mm. Any amount of rainfall would help Chennai ease water crisis and recharge the groundwater. Noted weather blogger Pradeep John said: “It converged perfectly over west of Chennai. In the past two days convergence happened in Vellore and so it weakened before reaching us. Our July average is 10 cm and we almost received the quota’s 40 per cent on Monday,” he said.

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