Monsoon Flooding in India

[aboobacker]

A month of intense monsoon rains has left many of India’s rivers flowing over their banks. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured the top image of flooded rivers in eastern India through a small break in the clouds on August 7, 2005. The image shows flooding near the confluence of the Tungabhadra and Krishna Rivers in India’s Andhra Pradesh state. At least 10,000 people had been evacuated from the banks of the Krishna River a few days before this image was acquired. The lower image shows the rivers on June 15, 2005, just before the rains started. Both images are shown in false color so that water is dark blue, clouds are white and light blue, vegetation is bright green, and bare ground is tan.

In detail : http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/shownh.php3?img_id=13026

[rocksea]

Monsoon this year turned terrible for some parts of India like
Mumbai. It seems the culprit is not monsoon in the real sense
but poor city planning?
Monsoon has been strong but only to the magnitude of a normal
strong monsoon (?)
At mumbai, the concrete jungle has few open ground where the water
could sink in. The drainage system is also found to be inefficient
to drain the water out of the city.
What other reasons could be attributed to the calamity?

[rocksea]

some details of the mumbai rains and flooding are here:

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=20050826005101200.htm&date=fl2217/&prd=fline&