In the third month of South West Monsoon season 2025, we have been able to track at least 23 flood monitoring sites of the Central Water Commission (CWC) where the respective rivers have crossed their Highest Flood Level (HFL). These 23 sites are spread over 5 river basins -11 sites in Ganga basin, 9 sites in Indus basin & 1 each in Mahi, Godavari and Krishna basins.
Continue reading “Rivers Crossing the Highest Flood Levels in Aug 2025”Category: River Basin
Rivers Crossing the Highest Flood Levels in July 2025
(Feature Image: Hydrograph of Pin river at Gulling site in Lahul & Spiti on July 04, 2025)
In July 2025 during the South West Monsoon, we have found rivers crossing their respective Highest Flood Levels (HFL) at least at 12 flood monitoring sites of Central Water Commission (CWC). Of the 12 sites, 11 are in Ganga basin and 1 site is in Narmada basin. The details of all these sites are given in table below. The sixth column of the table is the information about rise in meter (m) over the old HFL, duration (hours-hrs) the river has stayed in extreme floods and number of years (yrs) after the HFL is breached. The 12 sites are spread over 5 states: Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand.
Continue reading “Rivers Crossing the Highest Flood Levels in July 2025”From Texas to Maharashtra: Can River Basin Organizations Actually Work?
The principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM) have been supported by practitioners, policy makers and stakeholders across the world for a long time. While IWRM aims at integrating planning of land and water management initiatives together considering water as a resource, IRBM accepts the integrity of a river basin as an ecological unit for the same. River Basin Organizations (RBO) are basin level entities that can bring together stakeholders and coordinate, envision, plan and implement these integrated plans at the basin scale (or aquifer/subbasin/watershed scale). By implication, RBOs must be a bottom-up democratic bodies, upscaling solutions.
Continue reading “From Texas to Maharashtra: Can River Basin Organizations Actually Work?”IMD continues callous reporting of River Wise Rainfall in Monsoon 2020
This rarely gets reported in media, but IMD (India Meteorological Department) also provides river basin wise rainfall figures. Here is an overview of the river basin wise rainfall during SW Monsoon 2020 (June-Sept 2020, though the monsoon withdrew much later), like the way we have been doing for the last three years[i]. Our earlier monsoon 2020 articles provided district wise figures for rainfall in June 2020[ii], June-July 2020[iii], June-Aug 2020[iv] and June Sept 2020[v].
Continue reading “IMD continues callous reporting of River Wise Rainfall in Monsoon 2020”River Wise Rainfall in Monsoon 2019
Indian media never seems to report this, but IMD (India Meteorological Department) also provides river basin wise rainfall figures for South West Monsoon, also for other seasons. As in the previous years, here is an overview of the river basin wise rainfall during just concluded SW Monsoon 2019 (June-Sept 2019, though the monsoon started withdrawing only on Oct 9 and has not yet fully withdrawn from across India as I write this on Oct 15 2019), like the way we have been doing for the last three years[i]. Our earlier monsoon 2019 articles provided monsoon over view[ii], state wise rainfall figures[iii] and Marathwada specific situation[iv].
It’s not clear why Indian media does not report river basin wise rainfall figures, since that is arguably, the most appropriate way to look at the rainfall figures, since river basins are the hydrological units and the run off from the rainfall ends up in the rivers, and creates floods many times, as happened during 2019 monsoon. There could be issues of quality of the river basin wise rainfall figures, but that is true for all IMD’s rainfall figures at some level or other. Continue reading “River Wise Rainfall in Monsoon 2019”