Hyderabad: Inflows into the Krishna river are increasing due to five days of heavy rain in the upper catchment area. The Central Water Commission forecasts more heavy rain in and around Mahabaleswar — the origin of the river — in the coming week. Mahabaleswar recorded 18 cm of rain on July 18, 15 cm on July 17 and 12 cm each on July 16 and 15. The Koyna area received 20 cm rain on Tuesday night.
All this water flows into the Almatti dam, the first major dam on the Krishna in Karnataka. The inflow into the Almatti dam was recorded at 38,452 cusecs on Wednesday morning, and it is expected to cross 50,000 cusecs by Thursday. It may range between 1 lakh and 2 lakh cusecs in the next few days as per the CWC forecast. The Almatti dam has 55 tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet) of water against its full capacity of 130 tmc ft. If it gets the expected inflows for a week, the dam will be full to the brim and start releasing water to to downstream Jurala project in Telangana state via Narayanapur in Karna-taka. The same day last year, it had 123 tmc ft.
Rainfall activity is also improving in the catchment areas of the Tungabhadra river, which was causing concern till now. The inflows on Wednesday morning was recorded as 5,419 cusecs and is expected to rise to 10,000 cusecs by Thursday. The Agumbe area, the catchment for the Tunga-bhadra river, recorded 15 cm rainfall on Wedne-sday and 8 cm on Tues-day. The dam had 15.73 tmc ft against full storage of 100 tmc ft. This is way below the 38.71 tm ft of water that it had on the same day last year.
