Madolthenna Estate in the Kegalle District recorded the island’s highest rainfall on Tuesday, 84.5 mm, the Department of Meteorology said — and the department has since widened its warning area rather than narrowing it.
Wednesday’s advisory expects showers or thundershowers in most parts of the island after 1:00 p.m., with fairly heavy falls exceeding 75 mm likely at some places in the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central, Uva, North-Western and Southern provinces, and in the Mannar district, Daily Mirror reported. Hiru News carried the same departmental statement in Sinhala, listing the identical provinces and threshold.
The department again asked the public to take precautions against temporary localised strong winds and lightning during thundershowers. Misty conditions are expected at some places in the Sabaragamuwa, Central and Uva provinces during the early hours.
The warning area has expanded again
This is the more significant detail. The 75 mm threshold was raised on 1 November as Cyclone Murasu intensified in the Bay of Bengal, and it has not come down since. But the area it covers has moved: Tuesday’s advisory had narrowed the warning to two provinces and two districts, and Wednesday’s pushes it back out to six provinces and a district — close to the island-wide footprint the department was using at the start of the month.
Madolthenna’s 84.5 mm, recorded on 3 November, shows the threshold being met in practice rather than just forecast, and it fell in Kegalle — a Sabaragamuwa district inside Wednesday’s warning area.
Why saturated ground matters
The rain is landing on ground that has been absorbing water for more than a week. Four spill gates were opened at Deduru Oya on 2 November, spill gates at Rajanganaya were opened with a warning for the Kala Oya the following day, and the National Building Research Organisation has had landslide warnings in force for Badulla, Kandy and Ratnapura.
Those warnings have already been borne out: a landslide blocked the Up-Country railway line between Bandarawela and Heel Oya on Wednesday, disrupting train services.
A note on the wording
The department’s term is “fairly heavy” rain — තරමක තද වැසි in Hiru’s Sinhala filing — which is the standard Sri Lankan forecasting band for this threshold, not “heavy rain”, which denotes a higher category. The Daily Mirror headline uses “heavy showers”; the body of the same report uses the department’s own “fairly heavy”. The distinction carries different operational meanings for disaster-response agencies and is preserved here.
Not reported
The rainfall figure as carried does not name the second- and third-highest stations for Tuesday, give 24-hour totals for any other district, or state a validity period or expiry time for Wednesday’s advisory.