Ahmedabad: Amdavadis were bracing for a repeat of the July 23 deluge on Friday, with a red alert issued by India Meteorological Department (IMD), but the relieved city recorded only 45mm of rain till 10pm.Several city areas experienced moderate to heavy rain at night.IMD on Friday reiterated its red alert for Ahmedabad district on Saturday with chances of heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places.Even with 24mm of rain till 5pm on Friday, several areas in the city’s west were waterlogged. Citizens paid heed to authorities’ appeal to work from home when possible.Thus, traffic on most roads was lighter than usual.At 70.5mm, Thaltej recorded the highest rainfall from 6am to 10pm, followed by 67mm in Bodakdev, and 61.5mm in Science City.This intensity of rain triggered waterlogging complaints about service roads of SG Highway, Shela Club O7 Road, and Mahila Lake Road in Bodakdev.According to AMC data, waterlogging was reported at 50 locations in western zones.Traffic congestion was also reported near several spots along SG Highway due to accumulated rainwater.Conditions were partially cloudy for much of the day, and then two spells of heavy rain fell between 1pm and 3pm, and 8pm and 10pm.The showers also laid bare familiar infrastructure bottlenecks, with commuters saying even a brief spell was enough to cripple traffic across key arterial roads.Several blamed waterlogging around ongoing infrastructure projects and poor drainage for turning routine commutes into hour-long ordeals.Milind Parikh, a marketing professional, said his drive from Bopal to Vejalpur via SG Road took nearly 90 minutes after water collected beneath the under-construction bridge near Karnavati Club.“Rainwater cascaded from the bridge deck onto the carriageway like a waterfall,” he said. “Vehicles had to drive through the falling sheets of water.”
