“Happiness is the first rains after a long, dry spell,” may ring true for people who basked in the cool breeze when rainfall finally touched Greater Jakarta on Tuesday evening. But not everyone feels the same.

Rizki Ananda, 27, who lives in Tanjung Barat, welcomed the rain as water buckets in her family home had been practically empty for the last several months amid the prolonged dry season that started around July. “Alhamdulillah [thank God], I’m so happy because it has been very difficult to get water at home lately,” she told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

She hopes the rain will continue and elevate the groundwater level in the area because the jet pump at her house was being used far longer than desired, sometimes up to 18 hours a day.

“Such circumstances moderately increase the electricity bill,” the private employee said.

A similar opinion was conveyed by Muhroni, who lives in Kebon Sirih, Central Jakarta. He referred to the rain on Tuesday as a blessing.

“Finally, rain has come after weeks of sweltering heat. You know this residential area is in the city center, so it's a blessing to feel cooler air after the rain,” she said.

Despite the joy brought by the first rains after weeks, people living on Jl. Kebon Pala II in Makasar, East Jakarta, expressed the opposite. People from two neighborhood units worked together to clean mud and trash packing the street and houses after the Ciliwung River, located nearby, overflowed in the early hours of Wednesday following heavy downpour in the upstream area of Bogor.

Husni Bohari had to exit his house through a window to get to work in the morning as more than 50 centimeters of floodwater had filled his home.

The 74-year-old vegetable trader said flooding was common in the neighborhood, forcing locals to adjust to the circumstances.

“We have gotten used to floodwaters from Bogor. But still, some people may feel burdened because they have to clean the mud after the floodwater recedes,” he told the Post.

Dozens of people and Jakarta water management officers, known as blue troops, were cleaning the area when the Postpaid a visit on Wednesday afternoon.

At around 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Husni and his neighbors received text messages informing them of the rising water level at the Katulampa sluice gate in Bogor, which could cause flooding.

“When [the Katulampa sluice gate] is at alert level I, severe flooding here is inevitable. But if the water level is at level III, it's usually unclear whether the Ciliwung River will overflow,” he said. “Turned out it overflew at dawn.”

Eka Kurniawan, neighborhood unit (RT) 11 head of community unit (RW) 05, one out of two RTs affected by the flooding, said locals had not yet seen downpour in the area for weeks. The last time it flooded in the area was in April, he recalled.

The flooding on Wednesday inundated up to 80 houses in the housing complex.

Rainfall on Tuesday evening poured in several locations in Jakarta, South Tangerang in Banten and Depok, Bekasi, Bogor, Sukabumi, Bandung and Cianjur in West Java.

The Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) recorded that 15 locations were inundated by floodwater, namely in Cawang, Balekambang, Kampung Melayu, and Bidara Cina in East Jakarta and Kebon Baru, East Pejaten, and Pangedegan in South Jakarta.

Flooding in the aforementioned locations has gradually receded, according to the agency’s disaster and information data center head, M. Ridwan, on Wednesday afternoon.

The head of information for climate and air quality at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), Siswanto, said Jakarta and its surrounding cities were in a transition from the dry to wet season.

“It has been forecast that Jakarta will enter the wet season by the end of October, while in some parts of the south and west side of Jakarta, as well as parts of Banten and Sukabumi, the wet season is expected to start in mid-October,” he told the Post on Wednesday.

Ahead of the wet season, rainfall will be sporadic, he added.

The rain on Tuesday occurred due to cloud formation concentrated in Bogor and Sukabumi that extended to the southern part of Jakarta, Banten and West Java. The cloud formation was caused by sufficient humidity and moist air moving upward in an updraft in the aforementioned areas, which are surrounded by mountains, Siswanto explained. Meanwhile, people living in Rorotan, East Jakarta will have to wait another day for rain.

Farmer Abdul Kodir, the head of farmer groups in Rorotan, said farmers in the area initially planned to perform sujud syukur (prostration of thankfulness) when learning that heavy rain had fallen in some parts of Jakarta.

“But apparently it was not the rain that fell, but our tears,” he said.

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