Four spill gates at the Victoria reservoir opened automatically late on Tuesday as the day’s rain continued, hours after heavy afternoon falls submerged several main roads in Gampola.
The gates opened in the face of the prevailing adverse weather, Hiru News reported at 10.08 p.m. Colombo time. The filing describes the opening as automatic rather than a managed release.
Gampola under water
Earlier, Hiru reported at 6.19 p.m. that several main roads in Gampola went under water during Tuesday afternoon’s heavy rain. Its correspondent said the Ambagamuwa main road running out of Gampola town was among those submerged, and that traffic movement was obstructed as a result.
That is the only road the filing names. Gampola has flooded before in circumstances that produced far longer lists of affected streets, and those lists belong to earlier events, not to Tuesday.
Why the rain is still falling
The Department of Meteorology said rainfall exceeding 100mm again affected several parts of the island on Tuesday because of the active inter-monsoonal conditions. The department also pointed to a risk of disturbed conditions developing over the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday.
Both points extend what this desk reported earlier on Tuesday, when the department forecast falls above 100mm across four provinces and the Galle and Matara districts, with 162.5mm already recorded at Deniyaya by 5.30 a.m. The Bay of Bengal risk follows Monday’s fishermen’s warning about a developing low-pressure system.
The Kandy-Colombo road
The same Hiru filing repeats that a rockfall was recorded in the Kadugannawa area of the Kandy-Colombo main road, and that the Kandy District Secretary said the road would be closed through the Kadugannawa stretch until 6 a.m. on Wednesday. This desk reported that closure earlier on Tuesday.
Not reported
Neither filing gives the Victoria reservoir’s water level, the extent to which each gate opened, or the rate of discharge into the Mahaweli River — figures that have accompanied past releases at this reservoir. Neither carries a downstream warning for low-lying areas along the Mahaweli, names an official from the Mahaweli Authority or the Irrigation Department, or says whether any households in Gampola were evacuated or any property damaged. No Disaster Management Centre advisory had been reported at the time of writing, and neither filing states how long the gates are expected to stay open.
On sourcing and on figures in circulation: both filings are from the same newsroom, so this report rests on a single verified outlet. Searches of the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst, Island, Daily News, news.lk and Daily FT returned no filing on Tuesday night’s opening. They returned a dense field of earlier Victoria reservoir releases instead — including a NewsFirst report of four gates opening in November 2018, a December 2025 opening, an earlier two-gate opening, and a six-gate opening during Cyclone Ditwah, when Gampola was submerged. Search summaries offered figures from those events — a water level of 438.04m, gate openings of 0.702m and 0.705m, a discharge of 159 cubic metres per second — as though they described Tuesday. They do not, and none appears in either filing cited here. “Spill gates of the Victoria reservoir opened amid heavy rainfall” is close to an annual headline at this outlet and others; only the gate count and the date distinguish one event from another.
Sources
- Four spill gates of Victoria reservoir open — Hiru News, 10 November 2026
- Many roads in Gampola flooded due to heavy rain — Hiru News, 10 November 2026
Update, 11 November: six gates now open, and every figure this article lacked
A further Hiru filing on Wednesday morning escalates the release and supplies each of the figures the “Not reported” section above identified as missing.
The water level at Victoria has risen rapidly as heavy rain continues over the central hills, and six spill gates have been open automatically since Tuesday night, Hiru News reported at 11.12 a.m. Colombo time — two more than the four reported the previous evening.
The level. The reservoir stands at 438.12 metres above sea level, according to Wasanna Ahelapitiya, the Mahaweli Authority engineer in charge of the Victoria reservoir — the named official this article previously lacked.
The discharge. The six open gates are releasing 504 cubic metres per second into the Mahaweli River.
The gate-by-gate openings, which no earlier filing carried:
| Gate | Opening |
|---|---|
| G1 | 0.731 m |
| G2 | 0.746 m |
| G3 | 0.770 m |
| G4 | 0.708 m |
| G5 | 0.677 m |
| G6 | 0.716 m |
Gates G7 and G8 have not opened, which establishes for the first time in this archive that Victoria has eight spill gates and that two remain in reserve.
The downstream warning. With the gates open, the water level in the lower reaches of the Mahaweli may rise. Authorities have asked people living along both banks and in low-lying areas, as well as anyone using the river, to remain alert and exercise caution.
What this means for the figures flagged above
The previous version of this article warned that search summaries were offering figures from earlier Victoria releases — a level of 438.04 m, gate openings of 0.702 m and 0.705 m, and a discharge of 159 cubic metres per second — as though they described Tuesday. Wednesday’s filing confirms those were indeed from other events. The level is close to the Cyclone Ditwah reading, as would be expected of a reservoir near capacity, but the discharge is more than three times larger and every individual gate opening differs. The caution stands: at this reservoir, only the gate count, the date and the measured figures distinguish one release from another.
Still open
The filing does not say how long the gates are expected to remain open, whether G7 and G8 are likely to follow, or what the reservoir’s full supply level is — so the margin remaining cannot be calculated from it. It gives no rainfall figure for the catchment, no Disaster Management Centre advisory, and no report of evacuations or property damage downstream. It does not say whether the Gampola flooding reported on Tuesday has receded.
On sourcing: this update rests on the same single verified newsroom as the original report. A fresh search of the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst, Island, Daily News, news.lk and Daily FT for Wednesday’s six-gate opening returned only the recurring field of earlier Victoria releases — a NewsFirst report from December 2025, a Daily Mirror front-page opening, and several multi-reservoir filings — none of them this event.