The Department of Meteorology has forecast showers or thundershowers at times after 1:00 p.m. today across five provinces and three additional districts — an area that includes every district currently under a landslide alert.
The advisory, issued early on Saturday morning, covers the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central, Uva and Southern provinces, together with the Kurunegala, Ampara and Batticaloa districts. Mainly dry weather is expected across the rest of the island.
The department asked the public to take steps to reduce the risk of harm from temporary strong winds and lightning accompanying the thundershowers.
It also warned of misty conditions during the morning in parts of the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central and Uva provinces and in the Anuradhapura district.
Why the timing matters
The forecast area overlaps an alert that is still in force. The National Building Research Organisation’s Level 1 yellow “be vigilant” landslide warning — reported by this desk on 30 October — covers parts of Ratnapura, Kegalle, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya, and runs until 4:00 p.m. on 31 October.
Ratnapura and Kegalle lie in Sabaragamuwa Province; Kandy and Nuwara Eliya lie in Central Province. Both provinces are inside today’s rainfall forecast. The rain is therefore expected to begin at 1:00 p.m., in the final three hours of the landslide alert window, over ground the NBRO has already assessed as sensitive to further rainfall.
Neither the Meteorology Department’s advisory nor the NBRO alert references the other. The overlap is drawn here from the two separate statements and their stated areas and times.
Not reported
The advisory gives no expected rainfall amounts, no threshold figures and no district-level breakdown within the named provinces. It does not say whether the NBRO alert will be extended, reviewed or allowed to lapse at 4:00 p.m., and no update to the landslide warning had been issued at the time of writing.
Single-source. This advisory was carried by Hiru News at 6:06 a.m. Colombo time. At the time of writing no other verified newsroom had filed on it — the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing carried no weather item, EconomyNext was returning a server error, and Ada Derana has been returning an HTTP 403 block to this desk for roughly 51 consecutive days. Meteorology Department advisories are typically picked up by several outlets later in the morning. That was accurate at the time of writing; NewsFirst filed 47 minutes later — see the update below.
Update, 1 November: NewsFirst confirms the advisory
A second verified newsroom carried this advisory, and it matches in every detail. NewsFirst reported it at 8:55 a.m. Colombo time on 31 October — 2 hours 49 minutes after the Hiru filing above, and 47 minutes after this article was published.
Its account confirms the same five provinces and the same three districts for the afternoon rain, the same 1:00 p.m. onset, the same request to the public to guard against temporary localised strong winds and lightning, the same early-morning mist area, and mainly fair weather elsewhere. Nothing in the account above requires correction, and the prediction recorded here that the advisory would be picked up later in the morning proved right.
The article is no longer single-source.
Update, 1 November: what happened next
The same system produced a stronger forecast the following day. On 1 November the department put the depression in the Bay of Bengal on track to become a severe cyclonic storm by 2 November, and forecast fairly heavy falls above 50 millimetres over the same five provinces — with Kurunegala moving out of the rainfall area and into the morning mist area, leaving two districts. The 50mm figure also fills the gap recorded above: Saturday’s advisory gave no rainfall amounts or thresholds, and Sunday’s does.
