Sri Lanka It's Happening

June 19, 2005

The Tamil name for the Great Western Estate is Malla Thotta, roughly translated that means the estate where it rains. It sure is raining all the time a stark contrast from Colombo.

In Colombo the monsoon has been a damp squib, rarely have we had a full hour of rain. Usually the showers lasted only a few minutes each. The monsoon is all but a failure in Colombo.

The heavy rains means the soon to be destroyed St Clairs waterfall is in all it's majesty, even then not a lot of water flows through the Kotmale oya and one wonders just how many kilo watts of electricity will actually be generated by the power plant that is supposed to generate 500 Mega Watts.

Apparently the new plan (the plan changes all the time) is to dig a tunnel through the great western mountain to fetch the water to the turbine. Just imagine the cost.

Getting back to the weather, during the daytime the mercury dropped to fifteen, rarely do you see that happen except in December and January. The fact that the sun has not bothered to make any appearence at all is the obvious reason. Contrary to popular belief heavy rain does not by itself lead to a significant drop in temparature, it is the lack of sunshine that matters most.

Posted by raditha at June 19, 2005 2:35 PM