KATHMANDU: A brief shower accompanied by thunder and lightening on Sunday morning after a long dry spell came as a great relief to Kathmandu denizens.

According to weather forecasters the shower portends pre-monsoon rain. “Western, mid-western and western regions also received rainfall from early in the Sunday morning. It is a premonition of the beginning of the monsoon season,” informed Shiva Nepal, meteorologist at Weather Forecasting Division (WFD).

WFD has also forecast rainfall in mid, eastern and western hilly parts of the country in the evening. Lack of rainfall for the past few weeks had posed a grave threat to public health and crop cultivation in many parts.

According to the statistics provided by WFD, Kathmandu recorded a rainfall of 13.0 mm, Dang 18.5 mm, Dadeldhura 12.8 mm, Dipayal 7.2 mm, Birendranagar 14.7 mm, Nepalgunj 13.0 mm, Jumla 16.7 mm, Dhangadi 18.5 mm, Pokhara 7.8 mm, Bhairahawa 15.2 mm, Simra 14.0 mm and Taplejung 2.5 mm.

However, Pokhara and mid and eastern regions continued to receive rainfall till afternoon. “The westerly wind is not stationary. It is gradually passing through western to eastern parts of Nepal,” explained Nepal.

Today’s maximum and the minimum temperature in the capital was recorded at 29.8 and 14.3 respectively.