The sudden and heavy downpour of 17Jun2023 in Kalimpong.

Kalimpong experienced its first really heavy, showers in a thunderstorm which lasted for almost 90min from 7.00pm on 17Jun2023.
I checked the IR imagery and lightning at 5.30pm on 17Jun with a group of IIT (Mandi) interns and mentioned to them we had no lightning nor convective clouds in our vicinity. There was absolutely no indication that a severe thunderstorm was building up and the NOWCAST warnings for heavy rain also do not indicate this.

The timeline of satellite images below indicate how CB clouds developed and moved eastwards over Kalimpong from the hills of Nepal.

The rainfall intensity graph from the DAVIS AWS at my home shows that we had heavy rain (ie above 40mm/hr) for an hour at least and that we received almost 60mm of rain during this period.

Videos sent to our WhatsApp group by members show the severity of the downpour in Kalimpong on 17Jun2023 evening.         

                           

Update on 19Jun2023

My thanks to HA Members who shared the videos.

We had 101mm of rain in the last 24hrs (all of it from approx 7pm last evening till 4am on 18Jun2023)

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya
savethehills@gmail.com
9475033744