Roads across several parts of Colombo went under water on Wednesday evening as heavy rain continued, severely disrupting traffic — five days after a downpour put much of the capital under water and triggered a week of official recrimination over the city’s drainage.

Several roads around Maligawatta, Sangharaja Mawatha and Khettarama were submerged, producing heavy congestion in those areas, Hiru News reported at 4.54 p.m. Colombo time.

Water also stood on roads in the Armour and Barber street area, Navam Mawatha and around Borella, obstructing traffic there.

The filing attributes the flooding directly to the prevailing heavy rain. It names no agency, quotes no official, and gives no rainfall figure.

Landslide advisories for seven districts

Separately, the National Building Research Organisation issued landslide risk advisories covering the next 24 hours, Hiru reported at 4.29 p.m.

Level 2 is the higher of the two warnings issued here. The three districts carrying it — Kegalle, Nuwara Eliya and Ratnapura — are the central and Sabaragamuwa hill districts where slopes have been saturated for days.

The week this lands in

Wednesday’s flooding is the second time in under a week that Colombo’s roads have gone under, and it arrives in the middle of an unresolved argument about why.

On 6 November the capital flooded after an intense downpour, disrupting road and rail traffic and inundating part of the National Hospital. In the days since, this desk has reported the Prime Minister’s two-week canal deadline going unmet, Patali Champika Ranawaka’s attack on the CMC over the drainage system, a demand that the Colombo mayor resign, and a joint flood operation on the drainage network.

Earlier on Wednesday the Cabinet disclosed that only about 20km of Colombo’s 469km drainage network has been upgraded since 2014 — the unupgraded remainder still built to a standard of roughly 30mm of rain an hour.

The same weather has been breaking ground across the hill country. A landslide split a main road at Wewathenna, Gampola on Wednesday morning, the Kotmale reservoir’s spill gates were opened with downstream residents warned, and the Department of Meteorology had forecast rainfall above 100mm in five provinces during the day.

Update — Wednesday evening: more of the same forecast for Thursday

A fuller Hiru round-up filed at 7.42 p.m. supplies the rainfall figures and the named officials the earlier two filings lacked, and extends the forecast.

The Department of Meteorology expects rainfall above 100mm again on Thursday at places in the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central, Southern and Uva provinces.

The heaviest fall in the 24 hours to 8.30 a.m. Wednesday was 135mm, recorded at Damana in the Ampara district — on the opposite side of the island from the flooded capital.

Heavy rain fell through Wednesday afternoon over Colombo, Gampaha, Kandy and Hatton. In Hatton, schoolchildren and others in the town were badly affected, with rainwater running along the main road and disrupting traffic.

A lightning warning covering 22 districts — including Anuradhapura, Ampara, Kalutara, Kegalle and Colombo — was issued to 1 a.m. Thursday.

Merril Mendis, Director of the department’s forecasting division, told a Government Information Department news conference that rainfall will increase again from Friday.

24 reservoirs under the Irrigation Department are spilling slightly. Separately, the Kotmale and Victoria spill gates were opened, with Mahaweli Authority warnings to residents downstream.

Dr. Wasantha Senadheera, senior geologist at the NBRO, told the same news conference that because the rainfall is difficult to forecast, people should not wait for advisories to be issued before taking care — a notable caveat attached to the organisation’s own warning system.

One lane of the Kandy–Colombo main road at Kadugannawa, closed on Tuesday over rockfall risk, has reopened to traffic. NBRO officers inspected the site on Wednesday, and no heavy rain had been recorded there by Wednesday afternoon.

This update also confirms the Level 1 and Level 2 district lists reported earlier, from the same organisation on the same day.

Update — Wednesday night: Katunayake expressway exit under water

The flooding spread beyond the capital later in the evening. The Katunayake expressway exit has gone under water and is blocked, producing heavy traffic congestion, the Road Development Authority said in a filing carried by Hiru at 9.27 p.m.

That is the exit serving Bandaranaike International Airport, and it is the first of Wednesday’s filings to attribute a flooding report to a named agency rather than to the rain generally. The filing gives no water depth, no estimate of how long the exit will stay blocked, and does not say whether airport access or departures were affected.

Separately, an earth slip at Uduwara closed the Badulla–Bandarawela road completely at around 8.25 p.m., with the RDA diverting traffic via Hali-Ela and Attampitiya.

Not reported

Neither of the first two filings gives a rainfall figure for Wednesday in Colombo, says how deep the water was, or reports whether anyone was displaced, injured or trapped. Nothing states whether rail services were affected, as they were on 6 November, or whether the National Hospital was again inundated.

Neither says how long the water is expected to stand, what the Colombo Municipal Council did in response on Wednesday, or whether any road was closed. The NBRO advisory names districts but not divisional secretariats or specific slopes, and does not say whether any evacuation has been ordered.

Nothing connects the two filings: no official has said whether Wednesday’s flooding falls within the rainfall that prompted the landslide advisories.

A note on sourcing. All three filings come from the same newsroom, so this article remains effectively single-source despite carrying three source links — our credibility badge counts distinct hostnames, and there is only one here. Searches of the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst, the Island and news.lk found no independent account of Wednesday evening’s flooding at the time of writing — the Daily Mirror’s flooding coverage published the same day concerns the 6 November event, not this one.

The rainfall, reservoir and landslide figures in the evening update are attributed by Hiru to a Government Information Department news conference, so the underlying briefing is official even though only one newsroom’s account of it was reachable.

A note on a place name. The Hiru filing’s Sinhala renders one location as “ආමර් බාබර්”, which corresponds to the Armour Street and Barber Street area of Colombo 12. This article renders it as “Armour and Barber streets”; the filing does not spell out the word “street” for either.

Sources