Rain will end soon, BMG says

Rain will end soon, BMG says

Damar Harsanto
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The heavy rain of the past two days has inconvenienced many
Jakartans, especially motorists.

The overnight downpour on Tuesday until Wednesday morning
caused traffic jams across the capital.

In some parts of the city, traffic congestion was caused by
dozens of motorcyclists taking shelter under bridges and
overpasses, while Jl. Casablanca was backed up for seven
kilometers due to thick mud covering the road in front of Mal
Ambassador that forced motorists to navigate their vehicles
slowly to avoid becoming bogged down.

The bumper-to-bumper traffic reached as far back as the
overpass in Kampung Melayu, East Jakarta.

"I arrived at my office in the Jakarta Stock Exchange building
very late owing to the heavy traffic," grumbled Maria, 30, a
resident of Rawabunga, Jatinegara in East Jakarta.

But the unexpected weather will soon end, experts say.

The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said on Wednesday
that the downpours would last one to three days longer and give
way to the dry season's hot weather.

"The rain is temporary and is common during the dry season,"
BMG spokesman Ahmad Zakir told The Jakarta Post.

Zakir said the strange weather was caused by pockets of low
air pressure over the Indian Ocean off the northwest of the
Sumatra island.

"The phenomenon has led to a transfer of energy around Greater
Jakarta, sending more clouds into the city's skies and resulting
in downpours," Zakir explained.

Besides Greater Jakarta, heavy downpours will also occur in
Central Sumatra, North Sumatra, Lampung and West Java provinces.

"Technically, we are still in the dry season, but we will
continue to see more rain of a lesser intensity compared to that
during the wet season,," he added.

The BMG previously said the dry season would start in Jakarta
in April and end in November.