LAHORE: The monsoon spell that put Lahore on the Met Office’s urban flooding list for two days is winding down, with Sunday bringing brighter skies, a maximum in the low thirties and a residual chance of showers before a dry and steadily warming week.
The Pakistan Meteorological Department had forecast widespread rain across the upper parts of the country from 3 to 6 September, with rain, strong winds and thunderstorms for Lahore itself from 3 to 5 September. The westerly wave driving the second half of the spell was expected to reach its strongest point on 4 and 5 September, and has since begun moving on.
The city was clear and around 31 degrees Celsius through Sunday morning. The maximum is expected near 32 degrees with the minimum around 23, and shower probability is still running at about 75 per cent, with any activity most likely in the afternoon and evening. The Met Office had earlier put Lahore’s weekend daytime range at 35 to 37 degrees; two days of cloud and rain have held it below that.
Friday’s rain was heavy but very unevenly distributed. Figures released by the Water and Sanitation Agency put the highest reading at Johar Town, at 100.2 millimetres. Gulshan-e-Ravi recorded 46.2mm and Samanabad 42.8mm, with 40.8mm at Ali Block in Garden Town and 40mm at the Nishtar Town director’s office.
Kahna recorded 32.8mm, Farrukhabad 31.2mm, Jubilee Town 30.4mm, Upper Mall 26mm, Jail Road 25mm, Hadiara Defence Road 23.6mm and the Nishtar Town disposal station 23.4mm. At the other end of the range, Shadipura recorded 7.2mm, Thokar Niaz Baig 6.2mm, Manawan 4mm and Allama Iqbal International Airport 3mm.
WASA Lahore kept drainage operations running through the spell, with managing director Ghaffran Ahmad monitoring the effort. The rain brought relief from the hot, humid conditions that had held over the city all week.
From Monday the city turns dry. The maximum is expected to climb back to about 35 degrees on Monday, 36 on Tuesday and around 37 from Wednesday through Friday, with nights staying warm at 26 to 27 degrees. Saturday brings a slight cooling to about 36 degrees with a small chance of showers.
On current indications this is the last significant rain of the season for Lahore. What follows is the usual September run-up to the smog months, when falling wind speeds, crop residue burning and a shallower boundary layer begin to hold pollutants over the city.
The Provincial Disaster Management Authority had issued an alert for the eighth monsoon spell running from 29 August to 5 September, listing Lahore among the districts facing an urban flooding risk alongside Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Gujrat and Sialkot.
The provincial government has been running drainage and disposal station works under the Punjab Development Programme, with 96 drains and 94 underground water tanks completed across 51 cities and disposal station work under way in 23 more.
The Met Office had advised tourists and travellers to remain alert to changing road conditions through the spell and asked farmers to plan around the forecast. Rescue 1122 can be reached on 1122 and WASA’s complaint line on 1334.
Analysis
An average rainfall figure for Lahore is close to meaningless. Friday’s readings ranged from 100.2mm at Johar Town to 3mm at the airport, a spread of more than thirty to one across a single city on a single day. Any citywide average built from that distribution describes nowhere. It is the same problem this paper examined in its drainage report on 4 September, where the widely repeated 263mm figure from 23 July turned out to be one gauge at the airport while half the city logged under a third of it. Gauge-level reporting is not a technicality here; it determines which neighbourhoods get counted as flooded and which drainage schemes get funded.
The spell was a partial test of the new capacity, not a full one. Ninety-six drains and ninety-four underground tanks is real investment, but Friday concentrated its heaviest fall on Johar Town and the southern belt rather than on the older drainage in the walled city, Misri Shah and around the Gulberg underpasses. The infrastructure that most needs testing did not get the worst of it. The season is now effectively over, which means the next genuine stress test is unlikely before next summer.
The heat comes back faster than the relief lasted. Two days of rain bought a maximum near 32 degrees. Within seventy-two hours the city is forecast back at 37, with night minimums holding at 26 to 27. That combination — a hot day and a warm, humid night — is the pattern that drives peak evening electricity load, and it arrives in a week with no rain in the forecast to break it.
For farmers, the timing was survivable. Cotton and rice in the Kasur and Sheikhupura belts are both at a stage where standing water does damage, and a spell that ends now rather than extending into next week limits that exposure. The dry, warm run from Monday is broadly favourable for cotton picking, which is the more immediate concern in those districts.
What comes next is the air, not the water. The end of the monsoon marks the start of Lahore’s other seasonal emergency. Wind speeds drop, the mixing layer shallows and the regional burning season begins. The city typically has six to eight weeks between the last rain and the first sustained poor-air episode, which puts the beginning of the smog window in the second half of October on a normal year.
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