A number of highways and residents’ houses in the Kuta District, Badung Regency, Bali, were submerged in floodwaters due to high rainfall on Sunday, the 22nd of December.
Denpasar Police Public Relations Chief, AKP I Ketut Sukadi, said the flooding and waterlogging in the Kuta area were caused by high rainfall over a long duration from the previous Saturday to the following Sunday. The water channels were unable to accommodate the rainwater.
“The cause [of the floods] is very high rainfall with a long duration evenly distributed in the Bali area,” said Sukadi to the press on Sunday afternoon.
Sukadi further explained that on Sunday morning, around 07:30 local time, monitoring and data collection had been carried out regarding the natural disaster caused by heavy rain throughout the day in the Kuta area. Government officials have deployed water pumps to remove the floodwaters and have also regulated traffic flow.
In addition, there has been an increase in water discharge along the river in the Legian and Kuta Village areas, as well as a fallen tree on Jalan Setyabudi west of the Underpass in Kuta Village. The trunk and branches have been cut and removed.
“Because of the rather low land, high rainfall, and increased water discharge, [the rainwater] overflowed and covered the road, hindering motorists who were passing through the road,” Sukadi added.
Meanwhile, the Bali Agency for Meteorology, Climate, and Geophysics (Badan Meteorologi Klimatologi dan Geofisika Bali or BMKG Bali) forecasts that the entire Bali region will experience rain of varying intensities through the Christmas and New Year holidays. These conditions are expected to persist through nearly the entirety of January 2025.
Recent heavy rains in many parts of Bali were caused by a specific atmospheric phenomenon known as the ‘Madden-Julian Oscillation‘ (MJO). Along with the ongoing effects of the MJO, Bali’s weather has also been influenced by a cyclonic weather system located off northwest Australia and south of Indonesia.
“When the MJO is active during the rainy or the dry seasons, this phenomenon can increase the intensity of rainfall in the Indonesian region,” explained Brian Eko Permadi on behalf of BMKG Bali on Saturday, the 21st of December.