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.