The India Meteorological Department has kept a red alert in place for four Gujarat districts — Ahmedabad, Anand, Surendranagar and Rajkot — on August 1, 2026, warning of heavy to extremely heavy rainfall.
Twelve additional districts, including Banaskantha, Vav-Tharad, Patan, Mehsana, Sabarkantha, Gandhinagar, Aravalli, Bharuch, Bhavnagar, Morbi, Botad and Kutch, are under an orange alert for isolated heavy to extremely heavy rain.
The alert has narrowed from July 31, when 13 districts — including Vadodara, Narmada, Chhota Udepur, Surat, Tapi, Dang, Navsari and Valsad — were under red alert, leading to school and college closures in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Anand and Kheda.
Anganwadis in Ahmedabad will remain shut until August 3 as a precaution, local officials said, even as the district stays on red alert into a second day.
Gujarat’s disaster response teams remain on high alert, with authorities coordinating rescue and pumping resources for areas at risk of waterlogging.
The IMD expects an easing from August 2, when eight districts are forecast to move to a yellow alert as the rain-bearing system weakens.
Gujarat has seen an active monsoon through late July, with several districts already recording rainfall well above the seasonal average for this point in the year.
The state government has asked district collectors in affected regions to keep emergency helplines active and to coordinate with the State Emergency Operation Centre through the alert period.
The IMD’s warning system uses a four-colour scale of green, yellow, orange and red, with red reserved for extremely heavy rainfall that requires immediate action from local authorities and the public.
Fishermen along the Gujarat coast have been advised not to venture into the sea during the alert period, as the same weather system bringing heavy rain has also stirred up rough conditions offshore.
The India Meteorological Department has attributed the spell of heavy rain to an active monsoon system moving across the western coast, a pattern it has tracked closely through the final week of July.
Photo by Rakesh Krishna Kumar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
