ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Head of Pakistan’s Meteorological Department (PMD) Dr. Ghulam Rasool has said that this series of heavy rain in parts of the country is an extraordinary process which is due to unusual transformative process “Al-Nino”.
Talking to a private news channel, he said that this is an unusual situation and before this, it has never been torrential raining during the month of March in Pakistan.
He said another spell of rain is expected from Wednesday across the country, also a new spell of rain in Punjab, KP and north Balochistan is expected within two days.
He said the climate of Pakistan is also changing with the weather of the globe. It has been seen that winter is colder and summer is hotter than the normal weather, he added.
However, this time in Pakistan, the opposite situation was witnessed. The summer is a bit colder and the winter was a bit hotter, he said.
To a question, he said that during the rainy season last summer, torrential downpours and flooding killed 81 people and affected almost 300000 people across the country.
While talking to PTV news spokesman of NDMA Ahmad Kamal also has said that 49 killed and 80 injured in rain related incidents across the country.
He said the official body for disasters, showed that 53 house were also damaged.
He said that the death toll stood at 17 dead in Balochistan, followed by 13 in tribal region and one in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in the north-west.
The dead included five mine workers who died when a coal mine collapsed in Orakzai tribal region. Twenty-six other workers were rescued while two were still trapped, he added.
All other deaths occurred due to collapsing of houses, Kamal said.