Power outages as Mercury touch 43 degrees in Karachi

Naimat Khan

KARACHI: Load Shedding hit back Karachi after a relief of more than a week as mercury touched 42 degrees in Karachi. The Pakistan met office had issued warning of heatstrokes in the city, which in june 2015 heat wave had lost more than thousand of its dwellers.

According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), several areas of the southern Sindh province including its capital Karachi would be gripped with hot and dry weather that will likely take the mercury to 43°C or higher in the next few days. A heatwave alert issued on the PMD website says the weather on Thursday (today) and Friday will be “hot/very hot and dry”, with the maximum temperature hitting 43 degrees and humidity dropping to 10-20 per cent during the evenings.

The sweltering heat will start subsiding on Saturday, with the temperature dropping to a maximum of 37°C and weather turning warm. A high of 50.2 degrees Celsius was recorded in Shaheed Benazirabad on April 30, with dozens suffering heat strokes and business activities coming to a halt in the city.

“Mainly hot and dry weather is expected in mostly plane areas of the country.

However rain-thunderstorm with gusty winds is expected at isolated places in Malakand, Hazara, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Lahore divisions, Islamabad, upper FATA, Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir,” read the Met office daily report.

“Mainly hot and dry weather is expected in most parts of the country on Friday (Today).

However rain-thunderstorm is expected at isolated places in Malakand, Hazara, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Lahore divisions, Islamabad, Upper FATA, Gilgit Baltistan and Kashmir during evening/night,” said the statement issued here on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the situation in Karachi was worse by an increase in load-shedding after one of K-Electric’s power plants tripped here on Thursday.

Karachiites were subjected to additional hours of load-shedding after K-Electric’s Bin Qasim power plant tripped, exacerbating the power shortfall in the metropolis and making the soaring mercury harder to brave.

K-Electric officials said earlier on Thursday that Karachi would face increased load-shedding and areas exempted from routine load-shedding would also face an hour of power outage temporarily as the tripping has created a shortfall of 200MW. Clifton, Gizri, PECHS are among the areas which would face increased power outages, the company said. The maximum temperature in Karachi is forecast to soar to 43°C today, with humidity levels touching 70-80% in the morning. According to the Met Office, the heat wave is expected to last through Friday, with maximum temperature hovering in the 40-42°C range.