Heavy rainfall: Schools in Odisha's Balangir district to remain closed today

Due to a heavy rain alert in Odisha's Balangir district, all schools including government, private and Anganwadis have been ordered to close. The region has been experiencing heavy rain as a well-marked area of low pressure in the Bay of Bengal intensified into a trough and then a deep trough on Tuesday.

The state capital, Bhubaneswar, witnessed a record rainfall of 259.2mm in the past 24 hours as of 8:30am on Tuesday. This broke the previous record of 254.2 mm of rain received on August 20, 1997.

“In view of the heavy rainfall alert, all government and private schools and Anganwadis in Balangir district will remain closed today,” the administration said in a statement, according to news agency ANI.

A red warning has been issued for Angul, Dhenkanal, Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar, and an orange warning for Jajpur, Bhadrak, Deogarh, Sambalpur, Sonepur, Boudh, Sundergarh, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Cuttack, Khurda, Puri and Balasore.

The weather bureau warned of rough sea conditions and advised fishermen not to venture out to sea in Odisha until Wednesday afternoon. The depression over the northeastern Bay of Bengal has moved northwestward and intensified into a deep depression.

“It is likely to move northwestwards and cross the Bangladesh coast east of Khepupara by Tuesday evening and thereafter move west-northwestwards across Gangetic West Bengal in the next 24 hours,” the bulletin said.

The meteorological bureau predicts that the depression will cross the coast of Bangladesh east of Khepupara on Tuesday night and then move west-northwest across the West Bengal Ganges in the next 24 hours.

As a result of this weather system, storms with wind speeds of 45 to 55 km/h, gusting up to 65 km/h, are likely along and off the coasts of Bangladesh and West Bengal. Wind speed is expected to increase to 55-65 km/h, with gusts to 75 km/h in the next 12 hours.

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