Nor'wester lashes city for a while

Causes disruption to flight operations


FE Report | Published: March 31, 2018 00:15:14


Gusty winds accompanied by rain sweeping the Toynbee Circular Road area in the capital, refreshing the city-dwellers on Friday afternoon — FE Photo by Shafiqul Alam

The city had nor'wester rain and stormy weather on Friday. 

Swept by squally winds, it started raining at around 5.0 pm and briefly halted the normal life in the capital. The rain lasted around 15 to 20 minutes.

Around 1.3 millimetres of rain , accompanied by gusty winds reaching up to 67 per kilometre per hour, according to the Met Office.

Bogra, Lalmonirhat, Panchagarh, and Thakurgaon experienced hailstorms, which damaged crops and fruits on the vast areas of land, according to Met officials.  

Power supply was disrupted for a brief period in Dhaka, triggering outages in areas such as Kamalapur, Motijheel and Purana Paltan.     

Makeshift shops on footpaths were forced to close due to rain, which disrupted their normal trading activities. 

Passersby took shelter under the shades of roadside buildings.

People faced difficulties in getting rickshaws for travelling at short distances as most of rickshaw-pullers preferred not to operate during rain and thundershower.

CNG-run three wheelers and rickshaws charged extra fares on account of inclement weather, according to passengers. 

Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) saw disruption in flight operations on Friday after an abrupt nor'wester struck the capital, officials said.

Landing and take-off of any inbound or outbound flights were skittered to a halt at 4:15 pm after warning from the airport meteorology office, an HSIA official said.

Besides, flights heading towards Dhaka from other airports of the country were also halted on account of the stormy weather. 

 "Only two flights were diverted. One was flydubai, which was scheduled to land in Sylhet landed in Chittagong and another was Regent Airways from Cox's Bazar," he said.

Agencies add: Hailstorm coupled with rain damaged crops in the northern districts of including Nilphamari and adjoining areas.

Besides, a number of houses along with trees were damaged when the storm hit over hundreds of villages in the districts on Friday morning.

The storm began at 10am and ended around noon in the area, according to the locals. However, no casualties were reported.

Chairman of Mogolhat union of Sadar Upazila under Lalmonirhat Habibur Rahman said "big hailstones damaged roofs of many houses and flattened crops."

Shujol Rahman said, "I've never seen such a strong hailstorm in my life."

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