For a change, morning did not show the day. The sun was blazing down after dawn on Tuesday. People were gasping. After noon, clouds ruled the Patna skies (in picture by Deepak Kumar). The sun went under cover, out came the residents — to get drenched in the rain. It was around 3.20pm when the bright, scorching day suddenly changed colours, literally. Commuters on the streets looked up to see a heavenly beauty: roaring clouds and lashing thunder. Within moments, rain poured in. No one was complaining. “I don’t mind getting drenched in the rain after experiencing the scorching heat for the past one week,” said Shailendra Dixit, who had been caught in the sudden downpour on Hardinge Road. Weathermen claimed that the gusty winds accompanied with clouds had arrested the northward movement of the mercury column. “Development of cyclonic circulation over Bihar and its neighbouring regions resulted in thunder clouds and gusty north-westerly winds. The maximum velocity of the winds was 55km per hour. The temperature dropped by 10°C during the storm. While 10.4mm rainfall was recorded in Patna, there were showers in Gaya, Motihari and Chhapra, also,” Animesh Chanda, the director of Patna Met department, said. Perhaps the only man caught on the wrong foot because of the sudden downpour was road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav. The double-engine Dauphin 365 N1 chopper in which he was flying to Patna from Tajpur was not allowed to land because of the storm. “The chopper was 15 miles away from Patna. The Air Traffic Control did not give it permission to land for about 20 minutes. The pilot landed the chopper on an open field near Khudaganj police station at Islampur in Nalanda district,” a civil aviation department source said. Piyush Kumar Tripathi