Krishna Basin Rain Likely to Drop, While Godavari May See Rise in Flows

Hyderabad:Rainfall and flood forecasts for the Krishna river basin have projected a downward trend for the next week, giving officials time to take up relief operations in the affected regions in the Telugu states.

It is expected, according to the India Meteorological Department as well as the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, that the Krishna basin, spread over Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, might experience low to isolated moderate rainfall over the next seven days, compared to the very heavy rain of the last three days.

But, with the heavy rain still pushing copious amounts of water into the river, the water flow continue to be heavy but witness a decline once the rainfall begins to slow down.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the outflows from the projects on Godavari river witnessed significant drops by the evening, indicating that the catchment areas in its basin are yet to receive heavy rain that could translate into floods in the river.

The IMD, in its five-day prediction, said that the districts of Nashik, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Jalna, Beed, Parbhani, Gadchiroli, and Nanded, through which the river flows before entering Telangana could witness heavy to very heavy rainfall on Tuesday with some areas also experiencing. All of this might contribute to increased inflows into the river that could see the levels rise in Godavari in the next four to five days, officials said.

The flows in Godavari were fluctuating at different points because of the time it takes for water to travel the distance between each project, and the contribution from local catchment areas, officials said.

On Krishna, if the predictions hold good, then the inflows into Almatti dam might see an average of 1.14 lakh cusecs a day in the coming week, up from 70,000 cusecs reported on Monday. However, with the dam currently enjoying a flood cushion of 7.8 TMC ft and releasing only 30,000 cusecs as of Monday, the downstream flows could be controlled and the flows that come into Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh and Nagarjunasagar in Telangana would mostly come from localised rainfall.

As per expectations, the next week could see Srisailam get an average of 5.29 lakh cusecs of water while Nagarjunasagar could witness 5.57 lakh cusecs flow, which, in turn, might affect the timeline for proposed repairs to the two breaches on the project’s Left Canal.

Infograph

Krishna Basin

Monday’s inflows – Predicted inflows for next week

Almatti – 70,000 – 1,14,400

Ujjaini – 21,000 – 67,000

Jurala – 3,20,000 – 3,47,500

Srisailam – 4,89,868 – 5,29,000

Nagarjunasagar – 5,40,503 – 5,47,300

Godavari river-Monday data

Project – Noon Inflows – Noon outflows - 6 pm inflows – 6 pm outflows

Jaikwadi – 21,281 – 600 - 16,018 - 600

Sriramsagar – 1,95,767 – 1,13,853 – 2,51,250 – 2,65,853

Kaddam – 40,860 – 79,051 - 49,763 – 15,211

Sripada Yellampally – 50,3691 – 6,71,941 – 2,92,815 – 2,64,787

Medigadda* – 35,1970 – 67,9900

Sammakkasagar* – 3,21,730 – 4,21,380

*Medigadda, Sammakkasagar barrages are fully open