MUMBAI: For the past two days since Wednesday evening, Mumbai and its suburbs have been lashed with heavy rains causing flooding on roads and rail tracks and disrupting suburban train services and normal life in the city.

Schedules of local and long-distance trains were affected as there was waterlogging on tracks in low lying areas like Sion and Kurla on the Central Railway route. Although the airports were functioning normally, few flights had to be aborted before takeoff as there was water on the runway.

The met department has confirmed that the south-west monsoon has arrived in the city and at the same time it has also issued a warning of very heavy to extremely heavy rainfall at isolated places for the city and its neighbouring Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a red alert for Mumbai on Wednesday and a yellow alert for the next 4 days. In its alert, Dr Jayanta Sarkar, head of the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) Mumbai office said that the entire belt of Konkan coastal region including Mumbai may receive heavy to very heavy rainfall for the next 4 days.

Meanwhile over a dozen teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF)  have been positioned in various parts of Maharashtra in view of the prediction of heavy rains in certain parts of the state including one in Mumbai.

NDRF Director General S N Pradhan said in a tweet that four teams have been based in Ratnagiri, two each in Mumbai, Sindhudurg, Palghar, Raigad, Thane and one in Kurla in Mumbai.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has been taking a stock of the situation and has directed the administration to be on high alert to deal with any eventuality.