If you're wondering why that is, a hydrologist has given us the answer.

Too much rain, too little outlet

Hydrologist Dr Zulkifli Yusop told New Straits Times' Veena Babulal that the reason the city center was hit with major flash floods last week was because its infrastructure is not equipped to handle more that much rainfall.

That includes river banks and beyond as well, Dr Zulklifi said.

He revealed that the flood mitigation system in the city center can handle not more than 70mm of rainfall in a widespread area.

For comparison, the city's rain stations recorded an average of between 150mm and 200mm of rainfall during the five-hour storm.

Despite only measuring a peak of 44.5mm at 4pm, the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia professor revealed that the reading was only accurate for stations located in the city center.

Therefore, when the rainfall lasted for five hours across multiple stations around the Klang and Gombak rivers, the flash flood was massive.

"This is also typical of the big floods in KL in the past.

"When water rushes from upstream to downstream and it's also raining in the lower reaches, there will be river overflow, backflow and stagnation as water is already accumulating downstream," he was quoted as saying.

Although one might blame the blocked drainage and rivers in the city center, Dr Zulklifi said that nothing much can be done as forests and plantations would also have been flooded if it received more than 150mm of rainfall.

However, Dr Zulklifi did recommend that authorities should come up with a set of flood mitigation and prevention plans for Kuala Lumpur.