An avoidable tragedy: Mal Bazar (05Oct2022) 8pm

Mal Bazar is now a large town in Jalpaiguri district in the Dooars (see map above). The Dooars mainly consists of tea growing areas which are dissected by numerous small rivers originating in the foothills of Kalimpong district in W Bengal (India) and Bhutan, the two major ones being Jaldhaka and the Torsa rivers.
The foothills on the northern borders receive some of the heaviest rainfall in this region (approx 4000mm annually), often in violent thunderstorms in the late evening and night.

On 05Oct2022 at around 8pm, after completion of Durga Puja in Mal Bazar, the idols were taken by the worshipers for the immersion ceremony to Mal river. What followed still seems rather blurry and confused, but many people were swept away as can be seen in the video
- 8 people died.

video credit: State IAG WhatsApp group

The 24hr (0830am to 0830am) rainfall record (in mm) of Gorubathan and Jaldhaka , both small hamlets in the catchment area (see map) where STH has manual rain gauges are given below:

My personal assessment is,

• At this time, the rivers of this area are fast flowing mountain streams fed by rainfall in the catchment area in the foothills.
• Having said that, I don't think the rainfall for the past three days could have triggered a 'flash flood'. There are no dams in the area.
  
• More likely, that they underestimated the current and in the ensuing panic people lost balance and drowned.
  

A media report is placed below:

And of course the politicians have stepped in to give their expert opinions:

 Update

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

STH storm watch : Another LOPAR in the northern Bay of Bengal

After a relatively quiescent period through the monsoons, in Oct we are seeing a cauldron of activity in the Bay of Bengal with yet another low pressure area (LOPAR) brewing, this time off the coast of Myanmar and shifting slowly towards Bangladesh and W Bengal.
All this is not too good news for us living in the Darjeeling / Sikkim Himalaya and brings back memories of the 1968 disaster which also occurred in early October of that year.

Comment by Praful Rao on 12Oct2012

As a part of STH storm watch we monitor the activity in the Bay of Bengal continuously during the monsoons and I kept a close track of this low as it formed and then gradually shifted on a north-westerly track towards Bangladesh and southern W Bengal.
Since the storm was never categorized as anything more than a "well marked low pressure" very little warning about it was given both in W Bengal and Bangladesh as such I was shocked to read about the devastation, death and havoc it caused in Bangladesh. You can read about it here
But perhaps the silver lining in all this is that even an ordinary person like me can make use of the tools made available by technology today to effectively monitor adverse weather fairly accurately and obtain advance information and warning about it .

Praful Rao