Dirty floodwaters, impassable roads and floating furniture have become the norm every time it rains in Nairobi.
On Wednesday, November 25, the Kenya Meteorological Department issued a flash floods warning and urged Nairobi residents to plan accordingly.
The heavy rainfall alert projected that 30-40mm of rainfall is expected every 24 hours starting Thursday, November 26.
"Residents in all the mentioned areas are advised to be on the lookout for potential floods. Floodwaters may appear in places where it has not rained heavily especially downstream. Residents are advised to avoid driving through, or walking in moving water," the report reads in part.
Other towns expected to be hit by the heavy floods are Nyeri, Kiambu, Meru, Mombasa and the larger Western Kenyan region.
In Kenya's capital, floods usually mean long hours on the road, as traffic grinds to a halt with most highways turning into mini-pools.
Thika superhighway is notorious for the above, with the underpass just before Utalii College prone to some of the heaviest flooding along the busy highway.
A section of Thika Superhighway road between NYS headquarters and Muthaiga Police Station is also prone to flooding with motorists advised to avoid using service lanes and exercise caution along such routes.
South B and South C (popularly referred to as 'South Sea' during the rainy season) are the most famous estates when it comes to floods.
For a number of years, images of living rooms in the area converted into swimming pools by the raging waters have been flooding the internet.
To compound the predicament of such families, the rainwater often mixes with burst sewer lines - wreaking double havoc.
Known as the great equalizer, floods do not discriminate between rich and poor as footage of a 'house inside a river' in the affluent Kilimani Estate almost broke the internet at the end of November 2019.
What looked like an actual river tore through the house, waving down the staircase and submerging the entire lower floor.
Embakasi, Westlands, and Parklands estates have also been highlighted as areas highly prone to flooding with open manholes - a known menace.
Millions of shillings were lost during a similar period last year, leading to a county-wide exercise to unclog drainages to minimise the impact of the expected downpour.
The National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) also announced that it had begun closing businesses that had encroached on the Nairobi River, which runs through the city.
Kenya has two rainy seasons linked to movements in the north and south of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). It is a zone of heavy rain and thunderstorms where north-easterly and south-easterly trade winds meet.
This zone of wet weather moves south over Kenya in the months of October to December and is known as the "short rains".
The heavy rainfall being experienced in parts of the country is expected to continue throughout the coming month.
But poor urban planning coupled with an exponentially growing urban population has been highlighted as being as much risk as climate change.
Catch a glimpse of the house inside a river in Kilimani below:
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