The Meteorology Department has forecast heavy rainfall of more than 100mm in parts of five provinces, the Daily Mirror reported on Sunday morning.

The provinces named are the North Central, Central, Sabaragamuwa, Western and North Western. The department said a few showers are also expected in the Western Province and in the Galle and Matara districts during the morning.

The public has been asked to take adequate precautions against temporary localised strong winds and lightning during thundershowers.

A sharp turn against the dry-weather picture

The forecast arrives in the middle of Sri Lanka’s worst dry spell in years, and cuts against the outlook issued days ago.

The Meteorology Department warned on Friday that the developing El Niño may be the strongest in 75 years, with rainfall expected to stay low for roughly a fortnight before the second inter-monsoon arrives in late September. The Environment Ministry puts more than 160,000 people in eight districts as affected, with over 78,000 described as having lost livelihoods.

The dry conditions have also been blamed for a run of fires. A Sri Lanka Air Force Bell 412 helicopter was deployed to water-bomb the Muthurajawela Sanctuary on Saturday, and a second blaze broke out the same day in the Kuragala forest reserve in Sabaragamuwa — one of the five provinces now forecast to take more than 100mm of rain.

Rain of that intensity is not straightforwardly good news for drought-hit areas. Heavy falls concentrated in a single afternoon run off hard rather than recharging soil and reservoirs, and bring their own hazards on slopes and in urban drainage.

Update (September 14): the forecast verified, and a sixth province is added

The rain arrived. In the 24 hours to 6:00 AM on Monday, Halwala in the Kalutara District recorded 119.2mm — the island’s highest — and Elpitiya in the Galle District 80mm, according to Disaster Management Centre figures reported by Hiru News. The forecast threshold was met, though in the Western and Southern provinces rather than in the drought-hit interior where the rain would do most good.

The Meteorology Department has extended the warning to Monday as well, and its province list has changed. Rainfall above 100mm is now forecast at some places in six provinces: the Western, Central, Sabaragamuwa, Southern, North Central and North Western. The Southern Province is new relative to Sunday’s five-province list; the composition otherwise matches, and the Uva Province, which Hiru had named on Sunday where the Daily Mirror named the Western, appears in neither list today.

Update (September 14): flash flooding in Kandy, and the eight relocated families are located

The rain produced flash flooding in a Divisional Secretariat Division of the Kandy District, Disaster Management Centre Director Pradeep Kodippili told the Daily Mirror on Monday.

Twenty-five people from eight families were affected and have been temporarily relocated to Bawwagama Vidyalaya in Nawalapitiya, where relief is being provided.

That places Sunday’s DMC figure. The centre’s Sunday evening national count reported “eight families comprising 25 people relocated to safe locations” without saying where — the same eight families and the same 25 people. They are in Nawalapitiya, in the hill country of the Central Province, one of the provinces on both the Sunday and Monday heavy-rainfall lists.

A location discrepancy on the highest reading. Kodippili gives the island’s heaviest fall as 119mm at Walallawita in the Kalutara District. Hiru News, citing the same DMC figures, puts the 119.2mm at Halwala, also in Kalutara. The district, the figure and the reporting agency match; the place name does not, and neither outlet flags it. Walallawita is a Divisional Secretariat in Kalutara; Halwala is a smaller locality. The reading is firm, the station name is not.

The Daily Mirror also lists falls of between 50mm and 119mm at Hanwella, Elpitiya, Neluwa, Dunhinna, Wathurawila and Naula — a spread that crosses the Western, Southern, Central and North Central provinces, and the first station-level detail any report has carried.

Kodippili said the DMC was prepared to respond both to the heavy rainfall in some areas and to the dry conditions elsewhere — the clearest official acknowledgement yet that the two emergencies are being managed in parallel. He urged people to follow Meteorology Department alerts, warned those in hilly areas to watch for early signs of landslides, and asked the public to report incidents to the DMC hotline 117.

The landslide warning is the practical point the earlier reports lacked. Nawalapitiya sits in exactly the hill terrain where 100mm in an afternoon raises slope risk as well as flood risk.

The same day, a heat advisory for the other half of the island

The department simultaneously warned that daytime heat felt on the human body may reach a level “requiring attention” in parts of the North Central and Eastern provinces and in the Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Vavuniya, Moneragala and Hambantota districts.

The two advisories overlap: the North Central Province is on both lists, forecast for more than 100mm of rain and flagged for heat stress on the same day. Neither the department nor any outlet reconciles them, and the national picture remains split — ten deaths and 17,054 people affected by rain on the Disaster Management Centre’s count, against more than 160,000 affected by drought on the Environment Ministry’s.

Not reported

The reports remain short and leave the practical questions open. They do not say which districts within the six provinces are most at risk, whether any landslide or flood warning has been issued by the National Building Research Organisation or the Disaster Management Centre, or how many days the rainfall is expected to last. Nor do they say whether the falls recorded in Kalutara and Galle have reached the reservoir catchments, where storage stood at 34.3% of effective capacity on 6 September — the measure that matters for the drought.

It gives no cause for the change in conditions — no mention of the Intertropical Convergence Zone or any low-level atmospheric disturbance — and does not say whether the department now expects the second inter-monsoon earlier than the late-September date given on Friday. Nothing is said about what the rain means for reservoir storage, which the Irrigation Department put at 34.3% of effective capacity on 6 September, or for the 830,000-hectare Maha season planting that depends on it.

Update (September 13, evening): a second advisory for Monday — and a different fifth province

The Meteorology Department issued a further advisory on Sunday afternoon extending the outlook into Monday, Hiru News reported. It adds the timing the morning bulletin lacked and, on one point, does not match it.

Timing. Scattered showers or thundershowers are expected in many parts of the island after 1:00 pm on Monday (14), with falls exceeding 100mm likely at isolated locations. The morning advisory gave no time of day.

A province-list discrepancy. Hiru’s list of the provinces facing more than 100mm is North Central, Central, Sabaragamuwa, Uva and North Western. The Daily Mirror’s morning list was North Central, Central, Sabaragamuwa, Western and North Western. Four of five match; in the fifth slot Hiru has Uva where the Daily Mirror has Western.

The Daily Mirror’s version also reads oddly on its own terms, listing the Western Province both among the heavy-rainfall provinces and separately among the areas expecting only morning showers. Hiru carries that second element identically — morning showers in the Western Province and in the Galle and Matara districts — but keeps the Western Province out of the heavy-rainfall list. On the balance of the two accounts, Uva is the more likely fifth province, but neither outlet flags the difference and the department’s own bulletin has not been seen directly. Readers in both provinces should treat the warning as applying.

Uva, if correct, matters for the drought picture: it is one of the provinces worst hit by the current dry spell, and — with Sabaragamuwa, where the Kuragala forest fire burned on Saturday — is hill country where 100mm in an afternoon raises landslide as well as flood risk.

Ada Derana carried the same advisory on Sunday under the headline “Heavy rainfall expected in most parts of the island today,” with the same list of provinces, but its site returned a CloudFront error and the report could not be verified directly, so it is not cited here. Hiru News separately reported a Meteorology Department advisory on Friday pointing to afternoon thundershowers in the Northern and Eastern provinces — a different advisory covering different provinces, and not the forecast reported here.

Update, September 13: DMC reports 17,054 affected and ten deaths

More than 17,000 people have been affected by adverse weather across the country, with ten deaths and nine injuries reported following heavy rainfall, the Disaster Management Centre said on Sunday evening, the Daily Mirror reported.

The DMC put the total affected at 17,054, of whom 4,360 were directly impacted by climate-related incidents. 847 houses have been partially damaged and four completely destroyed. Eight families comprising 25 people have been relocated to safe locations.

The centre said it was continuing to monitor conditions and provide assistance to affected communities.

This answers part of what the morning forecast left open — the Disaster Management Centre has been engaged and is reporting — though the report does not say over what period the figures were accumulated, which districts account for them, or how the ten deaths occurred. Nor does it reconcile a rain-driven casualty toll with the drought emergency running in parallel, in which the Environment Ministry counts more than 160,000 people affected across eight districts.

Severe lightning advisory issued the same day

The Natural Hazards Early Warning Centre issued an Amber advisory for severe lightning on Sunday, valid until 11.30 p.m., the Daily Mirror reported.

Thundershowers with severe lightning were considered likely at several places in the Eastern, Uva, North Central, Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces and the Vavuniya, Mannar, Mullaitivu and Kurunegala districts, with temporary localised strong winds also possible. Three of those provinces — Central, North Central and Sabaragamuwa — also appear on the morning’s 100mm rainfall list.

The public was urged to shelter indoors, avoid trees, open areas, water bodies and open vehicles, avoid wired telephones and connected electrical appliances during thunderstorms, and beware of fallen trees and power lines.

The Meteorology Department separately expects the heat index to stay at the ‘Caution’ level in nine areas on Monday, with showers across most of the island after 1 p.m.

Sources