ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Chief Meteorologist Sardar Sarfaraz said on Friday the country was experiencing the monsoon season’s last spell caused by a combination of the westerly and easterly waves lashing different areas with heavy rainfall.
Earlier this week, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) warned of heavy rains from September 26 to October 1, saying they were likely to trigger floods in Punjab’s urban areas apart from the Peshawar city of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The NDMA also warned the public and local authorities to take precautionary steps to save lives.
“This is the last spell of the monsoon spell,” Sarfaraz said while speaking to Pakistan’s Geo TV. “We can say it’s a combination. The westerly wave has approached from the north and Easterly waves deflected currents from the foot of Himalaya going through the Bay of Bengal.”
He said any kind of rain until September 30 will be counted as monsoon rains, adding that no further downpour would take place after that.
“You know October, November and December are dry months in Pakistan,” he said. “The trend of the next rains in the next three months is below average.”
Torrential monsoon rains from July 1 till about the first week of this month have killed 347 people, including 175 children and 54 women, across the country, as per the NDMA data.
Global organizations, such as the United Nations, see Pakistan as among the countries most vulnerable to extreme weather patterns and climate change, with floods wreaking havoc in 2022, killing more than 1,700 people and displacing millions.
Scientists also attribute the country’s erratic weather changes on climate change effects. This year, the South Asian state recorded its “wettest April since 1961,” with 59.3 millimeters of rainfall, while some areas of the country faced deadly heatwaves in May and June.
Pakistan experiencing final spell of monsoon this year – chief meteorologist
https://arab.news/w4ep3
Pakistan experiencing final spell of monsoon this year – chief meteorologist
- Sardar Sarfaraz says no new monsoon rains are likely to lash the country after October begins
- Torrential monsoon rains have killed 347 people from July 1 until the first week of September
Hundreds of migrants, including Pakistanis, land in Greece after search operation at sea
- Rescued migrants were taken to a temporary facility on Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini
- Greece has made deportations of rejected asylum seekers a priority under its migration policy
ATHENS: Greece’s Coast Guard rescued about 540 migrants from a fishing boat off Europe’s southernmost island of Gavdos on Friday, one of the biggest groups to reach the country in recent months.
The migrants were found during a Greek search operation some 16 nautical miles (29.6 km) off Gavdos, a Coast Guard statement said. They are all well and are being taken to a temporary facility on the nearby island of Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini, a Coast Guard official said, adding most of the migrants were men from Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan.
In a separate incident on Thursday, the EU’s border agency Frontex rescued 65 men and five women from two migrant boats in distress off Gavdos, the Greek Coast Guard said.
Greece was on the front line of a 2015-16 migration crisis when more than a million people from the Middle East and Africa landed on its shores before moving on to other European countries, mainly Germany.
Flows have ebbed since then, but both Crete and Gavdos — the two Mediterranean islands nearest to the African coast — have seen a steep rise in migrant boats, mainly from Libya, reaching their shores over the past year and deadly accidents remain common along that route.
Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy will be eligible for help in dealing with migratory pressures under a new EU mechanism when the bloc’s pact on migration and asylum enters into force in mid-2026.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said deportation of rejected asylum seekers will be a priority.
