It is feared that more than fifty people have lost their lives in flooding in the Saurashtra Region of Gujarat State, after the annual monsoon rainfall arrived with particular severity on Wednesday 24 June 2015. The worst casualties are thought to have occurred in the Amreli District, where at least 36 people have died, 13 of them in a single incident where two houses were washed away in the village of Nani Vabhaniya near Bagasara. At least three people have also died in Bhavnagar District, at least two in Rajkot District and two in Surat District. The situation has been made worse by the sudden filling of a number of dam lakes in the region, which has forced engineers to release water in order to prevent the dams becoming overloaded.
Flooding in the Pandesara District of Surat on Thursday 25 June 2015. The Economic Times.
Gujarat has a monsoonal climate, with a hot dry summer lasting from March to mid June, followed by a monsoon season which lasts till September. Typically the Saurashtra Region receives about 575 mm of rain a year, with about 350 mm in the month of July, and no rainfall at al from December till May. The state regularly suffers flooding during the monsoons, but the severity of the start of this year's season caught many people by surprise. Heavy rainfall has been reported across several other states of India during the last 24 hours, and flooding has also been reported in Jammu and Kashmir.
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