Weather • Urban flooding

A Heavy Rain Cell Is Moving Into the Twin Cities and Lahore. Here Is What to Do Before Saturday Morning

The Met Office has warned of urban flooding in low-lying areas from Friday night through Sunday. The 26 spots in Lahore that always flood, the streets in Rawalpindi that Nullah Leh turns into a river, and the small things you can do this evening to keep your car, your shop, and your family out of trouble.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department has forecast a fresh monsoon spell across upper and central Pakistan from Friday night through Sunday morning, with the heaviest rain expected in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Gujranwala, Sialkot, and the rest of the Potohar region. The National Disaster Management Authority has warned that heavy falls in a short window could trigger urban flooding in low-lying neighbourhoods, and the Punjab Disaster Management Authority has activated its monsoon control room in Lahore. This is the practical guide to the next 36 hours.

Where the rain has already fallen

The past 24 hours have already produced a warning shot. Islamabad recorded its highest rainfall in the country on Friday — 61 millimetres at Golra, 36 at Bokra, 35 at Zero Point, 12 at Saidpur, and one millimetre at the airport. In Rawalpindi, the rain gauge at Shamsabad showed 51 millimetres, with 35 at Kattarian, 29 at Pirwadhai, 26 at Gawalmandi, and 14 at Kachehri. These are not the heaviest totals of the week — 150 millimetre bursts have been recorded earlier this month at Pirwadhai and Katcheri — but they are enough to confirm that the storm drains are already running at or above capacity in several neighbourhoods before the heaviest band of the weekend has even arrived.

Islamabad and Rawalpindi are not the only places in the line of fire. PMD has also warned of urban flooding in Mardan, Swabi, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Sialkot, and Lahore over the weekend, with flash-flooding risk in the local streams and nullahs of Kashmir, Murree, Galiyat, and the twin cities. The big cities of central Punjab — Lahore, Faisalabad, Sargodha, and Multan — are also in the forecast envelope for Saturday, with isolated heavy falls likely at a few places.

The 26 places in Lahore that always flood

The Punjab Disaster Management Authority and the Water and Sanitation Agency maintain a list of 26 chronically flood-prone points in Lahore that have been mapped over years of monsoon seasons. If you live in, work in, or are driving through any of these neighbourhoods, expect standing water on the road from the first heavy downpour, and plan to take an alternative route.

The list, in alphabetical order: Bhati Gate, Sheranwala Gate, Eik-Moria Pul, Lakshmi Chowk, GPO, Nabha Road, Firdous Market, Do-Moria Pul, Kashmir Road, Cooper Road, Lytton Road, Chowk Na Khuda, Lawrence Road, Usman Block Garden Town, Link Road in Model Town, Sultan Ahmed Road in Ichra, B-Block Tajpura, the General Hospital and Qainchi Stop, Tikka Chowk in Johar Town, Empress Road and Haji Camp, Qurtaba Chowk, Shah Jamal, Lahore Railway Station, Baghechi Seithan on GT Road, Multan Road near the LESCO Grid, and Karim Block Market.

Several of these have been the subject of a Rs 177 billion drainage upgrade that the Punjab government says has already shortened the time water sits on the road. Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz’s adviser, Mian Yasin, told a press conference earlier this month that at Lakshmi Chowk — historically one of the worst spots in the city — a 150 millimetre downpour is now cleared in 80 to 85 minutes, down from several hours before the upgrade. The system is not perfect, but it is measurably better than it was. Expect the worst at the underpasses and at the older gates of the Walled City, where the storm drains predate the modern sewer network by a century or more.

The roads to actually avoid on Saturday morning are not the famous ones. They are the side streets off Multan Road near the LESCO grid, the lower stretch of Lytton Road, and the entire Usman Block of Garden Town. If your commute takes you through any of them, leave an hour earlier. A senior WASA engineer, speaking on background

In Rawalpindi, watch Nullah Leh

The water that floods Rawalpindi’s low-lying neighbourhoods comes overwhelmingly from one place: Nullah Leh, the seasonal drain that runs through the middle of the city. When it rises, it floods the lower fringes of Pirwadhai, Fauji Colony, Mumtaz Town, Dhok Kala Khan, Banaras Colony, and the older settlements along Murree Road. In 2024 and 2025, the same neighbourhoods have been the first to be evacuated in every heavy spell, and several of the worst-hit streets have not been rebuilt to any higher standard since.

The WASA Rawalpindi managing director, Aziz Ullah Khan, has placed heavy machinery at Liaquat Bagh, Committee Chowk Underpass, Murree Road, Sadiqabad, City Saddar Road, Dhoke Khabba, Millat Colony, and Arya Mohalla. If you live in any of those catchment areas, keep your phone on the WASA emergency number (051-5555546) and the Rescue 1122 number (1122) for the duration of the warning. The district administration has also opened temporary relief camps at schools in the cantonment area, with cots, drinking water, and first aid.

In Islamabad, the trouble is on the side streets, not the main avenues

Islamabad’s main avenues — the Expressway, the Jinnah Avenue, the Faisal Avenue — are well-drained. The trouble begins on the smaller service roads, the katchi abadis that line the Margalla hills, and the older sectors where the original storm drain network was never sized for a city of two million people. The NDMA advisory on Friday specifically warned of urban flooding in I-8, I-10, G-7, and the low-lying pockets of G-9 and G-10, as well as the long strip of low ground between the Faisal Mosque and the Zero Point interchange.

The CDA has placed dewatering sets at I-8 Markaz, the Centaurus underpass, and the Kashmir Highway underpass near G-13, and has asked residents in low-lying sectors to move vehicles to higher ground before midnight. If your home is in any of these sectors and you have a car, this is the one task worth doing tonight.

What to do in the next twelve hours

This is the practical list. None of it is dramatic. All of it is the kind of thing people wish they had done before the water came up to the doorstep.

1. Move any car parked in a low-lying street or underpass to a higher spot. The WASA teams in Lahore and Rawalpindi have already begun towing stranded vehicles; you do not want yours on the list.
2. Charge every power bank you own. Cell towers stay up during urban flooding, but the local power often does not, and the worst moments of past floods have all been the ones when the phone died mid-call.
3. Fill clean water containers. The Lahore and Rawalpindi systems are vulnerable to contamination during heavy rain, and the standard public health response is a boiling-water advisory for the 24 hours after the worst of the downpour.
4. Pull any electrical appliance off the ground floor in shops and small businesses. The Lahore motorcyclist who was electrocuted in July died because a live wire fell into standing rainwater. The shopkeeper’s response should be to assume the same risk in any shop with a ground-floor power socket.
5. Do not drive through standing water at an underpass, even if it looks shallow. Most underpass flood deaths in Pakistan are not from drowning; they are from cars being swept sideways by water moving at walking pace.
6. Keep children out of nullahs, storm drains, and the open channels that run through cities. The water rises in those channels faster than people expect, and the current is far stronger than the surface suggests.
7. If you live in a chronically flooded neighbourhood, identify the nearest designated relief camp in advance. In Lahore the camps are at the 26 points above; in Rawalpindi the camps are at the WASA stations; in Islamabad the camps are at the CDA’s sector offices.

The next 36 hours, by city

In Islamabad, the heaviest rain is expected from late Friday night through Saturday morning, with thunderstorms and strong winds. Rain is forecast on Saturday morning, with occasional gaps. By Sunday the system should have moved east.

In Rawalpindi, expect the same window — late Friday night through Saturday — with the additional risk of Nullah Leh rising sharply if Islamabad’s runoff comes down the drain. The committee chowk underpass will be the first to be closed if water reaches the level of the curb; the Mareer Chowk underpass is the second.

In Lahore, rain is forecast from Friday evening through Sunday morning, with the heaviest spells likely on Saturday. The 26 chronically flooded points above are the ones to plan around. The provincial government has also placed dewatering sets at Jail Road, Qurtaba Chowk, the WASA head office, and Karim Block, so the response is better equipped than it was two years ago, but the response is still not enough to clear a 100-millimetre downpour in less than an hour in the worst-hit neighbourhoods.

In Murree and Galiyat, the bigger risk is landslide, not urban flooding. The PMD has warned of landslides in the mountainous areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, Murree, Galiyat, and Kashmir during the forecast period. Tourists should defer travel plans; residents should know the designated evacuation routes for their union council.

The pattern underneath this weekend’s rain

This is the third heavy monsoon spell in the last six weeks to bear down on the same set of cities. The pattern is consistent: the same neighbourhoods in Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Islamabad flood first, every time, and the same response teams have to clear the same underpasses. The drainage upgrade in Lahore is real, but it is not yet complete, and the city’s growth has outpaced it in several areas. The 26 chronically flooded points are the visible tip of a much larger infrastructure problem that is not going to be solved in one weekend.

For the next 36 hours, the practical question is the small one: which streets do you avoid, which car do you move, which power bank do you charge. The bigger question — why does this keep happening — is one for after the rain stops.