The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is holding a special meeting of its standing committee on the issue of potholes. The BMC has already allotted Rs 50 crore for pothole repair work this season.

Potholes and poorly maintained roads, which caused much grief in Mumbai this year, were aggravated by the rain, with water-logging reported from many areas this morning like Bandra, Kurla and Dadar (see highlights).

Mumbai's municipal officials wore a brave face and promised that the city is better prepared this year. "For the next three days, I have asked my men to be on alert and have asked to them do as much cleaning of drains as possible. As for road maintenance, we will do it at night," said Additional Municipal Commissioner SVR Srinivas.

Mumbai, however, could heave a sigh of relief today as the 4.95-metre high tide which was expected at 1.27 pm, came in, unaccompanied by rain (see pics).

Central Railway trains are still said to be running late. In the morning peak-hour rush, the trains ran 20 minutes late. Road traffic, however, is largely back to normal. The schools remain shut in keeping with the BMC and Met advisories.

The weather department has also sent alerts to disaster management units of the municipal bodies and state districts and to the Railways and other utilities to be prepared with contingency plans for the next three days.

There have been no reports of delays in flights this morning. Yesterday, some flights did run late because of the heavy rain.

Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or MNS held three government engineers captive for six hours in their BMC office on Monday. The engineers were allowed to leave only after they gave a written assurance that they would fix potholes as soon as the rain stopped.

A fake SMS, purported to have been sent by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corportation or BMC, claimed that Mumbai will face the year's heaviest rains today. The BMC later denied sending the message. The Met Department clarified that it had predicted "heavy to very heavy rainfall" and added that it did not send any alerts to the public.