Indus River System Authority (Irsa) further reduced water outflow downstream Tarbela Dam by 20,000 cusecs on Thursday, causing 1,000MW drop in the hydel power generation. The hydel power generation dipped from 6,400MW to 5,400MW though IPPs contributed 6,639MW to the national grid, almost 600MW more than the previous week and compensated loss of hydel power to a great extent.
On the other hand, low flood in River Sutlej greatly helped augment water availability for the current Kharif crops and coming Rabi crops. This enabled Irsa to reduce water outflow from Tarbela Dam from 1,00,000 cusecs to 80,000 cusecs and retain more water of Indus River inflow in the dam.
Flood Warning Centre Lahore says that 37,700 cusecs water is flowing in River Sutlej at Gandasingh Wala, 40,500 cusecs at Sulemanki and 12,800 cusecs at Islam Headwork on Thursday. In Sindh, 1,42,200 cusecs water is flowing in River Indus at Guddu barrage, 85.700 cusecs at Sukkur Barrage and 49,900 cusecs at Kotri barrage. Sindh irrigation engineers are discharging 43,700 cusecs river water into the Indus delta.
Met Office said that seasonal low lies over north-west Balochistan. Weak monsoon currents are affecting upper parts of the country. In its forecast for Friday, met office said that mainly dry weather is expected over most parts of the country. However, isolated thunderstorm/rain is likely to occur at a few places over upper Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, North Punjab, Gilgit-Baltistan & Kashmir. It said isolated rain/thundershower occurred in upper Punjab, Hazara, Malakand divisions and Kashmir on Thursday as follows: Parachinar 25, Sargodha 24, Malamjabba 12, Shorekot nine, Hunza seven and Cherat six mm.