Mumbai, Pune, Raigad districts and ghat areas on ‘red’ alert today

3 min readBengaluruUpdated: Jul 6, 2026 11:48 AM IST

Amid IMD’s red alert, the State Disaster Management Authority has directed employees in private offices across Mumbai to work from home. Express Photo by Deepak Joshi

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) Monday placed Mumbai under a red alert for extremely heavy rainfall and issued similar warnings for Pune, Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Ratnagiri, and Kolhapur districts, as intense monsoon showers battered large parts of Maharashtra.

In view of the severe weather, the Pune district administration ordered all schools to remain closed Monday.

Earlier in the day, traffic on the Pune–Mumbai Expressway and the old Mumbai–Pune Highway was suspended after a landslide and damage to a retaining wall at the Missing Link, triggered by heavy rainfall and water accumulation.

Traffic was later restored on the Mumbai–Pune carriageway of the Missing Link section of the expressway, while the Pune–Mumbai corridor remains closed, with vehicles being diverted via the old Mumbai–Pune Highway.

Record rainfall in Lonavala, Mahabaleshwar

The IMD warning comes after exceptionally heavy rainfall across the Western Ghats. Lonavala, the hill station connecting Mumbai and Pune, recorded 670 mm of rainfall in the 24 hours ending Monday morning, making it one of the wettest days in the region in recent years.

Mahabaleshwar, in the state’s Satara district, received 513 mm of rainfall during the same period, marking its second-highest 24-hour rainfall since 2014. The hill station recorded nearly one-tenth of its average annual rainfall (5,710 mm) in a single day. Its all-time 24-hour July rainfall record is 594 mm, recorded on July 23, 2021.

To put the intensity into perspective, Lonavala’s single-day rainfall exceeded the average annual rainfall of Jaipur (620 mm) and was close to Pune’s annual average of 763 mm. Several areas across the ghat regions of Pune, Raigad and Mumbai districts have been lashed by extremely heavy rainfall since Sunday.

More rain in Maharashtra

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The intense rainfall has been driven by a combination of strong monsoon winds from the Arabian Sea and a depression moving across central India.

As of Monday morning, the system was centred over south Jharkhand, about 70 km southwest of Jamshedpur and 110 km south-southeast of the state capital Ranchi.

“The depression is very likely to move nearly northwestwards across Jharkhand and adjoining north Odisha and north Chhattisgarh during the next 24 hours,” IMD said.

The weather system is expected to move towards Vidarbha and Marathwada over the next two days. IMD has warned of extremely heavy rainfall over Konkan, Central Maharashtra, and Eastern Gujarat through Tuesday, while issuing a yellow alert for moderate to heavy rainfall in Vidarbha and Marathwada Monday.