Gusty winds uproot trees, lamp posts, cripple evening traffic across central Kol
Times of India | 24 June 2026
Kolkata: The hailstorm with a wind speed of 75 kmph barrelled through central Kolkata on Tuesday afternoon, leaving behind a trail of uprooted trees and lamp posts that threw traffic out of gear in the central business district and left homebound passengers stranded for hours. The worst-affected areas included Moulali, Esplanade, Dalhousie, Park Street and Maidan. Altogether, 50 full-grown trees were uprooted by the squall.
Such was the situation that all key roads around Maidan were blocked for a while as traffic cops, the disaster management group of Kolkata Police and KMC workers joined hands to clear the road.
According to a KMC official, a majority of the uprooted trees were in central Kolkata, particularly around Maidan, which bore the brunt of the squall. The KMC team of tree cutters was left struggling to remove the uprooted trees till Tuesday late evening.
JL Nehru Road and SN Banerjee Road were shut partially for over an hour to try to clear the road. JL Nehru Road alone saw six trees or branches falling on the northbound stretch, halting traffic.
A big branch that fell crisscrossing SN Banerjee Road near Rani Rashmoni High School put traffic to a complete halt for more than 45 minutes. Students came out around 3.40 pm and joined hands with the cops to remove the branch and to clear the path for traffic movement. “We were stuck for more than 45 minutes but got a lucky escape,” said Basanta Das, bus conductor of route 239. “A major accident was avoided as the huge branch fell off just in front of our bus,” he said.
Fallen trees and branches disrupted movement on Kidderpore Road, Cathedral Road, Cathedral Road and Park Street, along with Albert Road and Hungerford Street.
Police sources said that several important crossings were forced to switch to manual mode due to the uprooted lamp posts.
The fallen trees also damaged multiple vehicles. At the high court parking area, a tree fell onto several parked cars. Trees also pulled down cable wires and transformers around Maidan and SN Banerjee Road. In Moulali, an uprooted tree blocked the road. It snapped cables and crashed into a car.
With several schools and colleges getting over for the day around the same time, students and their guardians faced difficulties getting home.
A KMC parks department official conceded that it was an uphill task for the civic body’s tree-cutting team to remove uprooted trees from the thoroughfares. “Though we sent our teams to the spots to clear the blocked traffic by removing either the logs or the branches of the uprooted trees, it took time as uprooting of the large trees was concentrated in zones and we lacked manpower to remove such a large number of trees,” said the civic official.