SW Monsoon 2020: District Wise Rainfall

September 30, 2020January 20, 2022 SANDRPLeave a comment

India received 957.6 mm rainfall in Just concluded South West Monsoon 2020, during the scheduled 4 month monsoon from June 1 to Sept 30, 2020. This is 8.74% above normal monsoon rainfall of 880.6 as per India Meteorological Department (IMD). This is considered ABOVE NORMAL rainfall, since rainfall is in the range 4-10% above Normal rainfall. This sounds good at national level, but the situation on ground could be very different, if we see the rainfall across the country.

It is noteworthy as per even IMD, monsoon has not yet withdrawn from most parts of the country. But IMD closes its monsoon rainfall account at 0830 hours on Sept 30, so all rainfall after that hour has to be counted in “Post Monsoon” rainfall book, even though the rainfall is very much part of monsoon as per IMD.

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District wise rainfall in June-Aug 2020 in India

August 31, 2020August 31, 2020 SANDRPLeave a comment

In the ongoing South West Monsoon, India received 44 year old high surplus rainfall of 327 mm in just concluded Aug 2020, 26.6% above normal rainfall of 258.2 mm. This helped the total June-Aug 2020 rainfall to achieve 10% surplus, with actual rainfall 780.3 mm, 69.9 mm higher than normal rainfall of 710.4 mm. In June the country received 18% above normal rainfall and in July it received 9.9% below normal rainfall, the rainfall at the end of June was just 1.1 mm above normal. Thus almost the entire surplus rainfall is thanks to the rainfall during Aug 2020. The rainfall distribution has however, been far from normal that these figures suggest, as we can see from the state wise and district wise figures below.

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Rainfall

State wise rainfall Pre Monsoon 2020 & Post monsoon 2019

June 5, 2020February 28, 2021 SANDRPLeave a comment

India Meteorological Department (IMD) divides a water year (June 1 to May 31) into four seasons: Monsoon: (June 1 to Sept 30), Post monsoon (Oct 1 to Dec 31), Winter (Jan 1 to Feb 28/9) and Pre Monsoon (March 1 to May 31). For rainfall during all these seasons, IMD’s hydro-meteorological website[i] provides a lot of data on daily basis, including daily district wise rainfall, state-wise, sub division wise and river wise daily rainfall maps among many other weekly, monthly and seasonal products. However, one problem with it is that none of this information is archived. So if you missed seeing or downloading available data on any date, there is no way to look at it even next day. This is even true of the seasonal rainfall maps, unfortunately.

Most observers look at the monsoon rainfall data, which is clearly the most important season, without doubt. However, the rainfall in other seasons is also very important from a number of perspectives.

Here we are giving a detailed account of the pre-monsoon season rainfall that India received in the season just ended on May 31, 2020, including state wise, sub division wise, river wise and also district wise figures. Along with it, we also provide the figures of post monsoon figures for the just concluded water year. For the winter season (Jan-Feb 2020) we have only the figures for Jan 2020 since we missed downloading the Feb 2020 figures. We had already provided the monsoon 2019 figures through two blogs in October 2019[ii].

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Disasters · Floods · Gujarat

Will Cyclone VAYU bring floods in Saurashtra, Kutch and South Rajasthan?

June 13, 2019June 13, 2019 SANDRPLeave a comment

The latest update from IMD[i] on Very Severe Cyclonic Storm VAYU (issued at 0700 hrs on June 13, 2019) does not provide any specific risk of floods in any region, nor does it mention any possibility of persistent rainfall leading to risk of floods.

Another IMD update at 1200 hours on June 13, 2019[ii] says large parts of coastal Saurashtra may experience winds of 160 kmph starting June 13 afternoon, but there is no mention of risk of floods. It does give heavy rainfall warning: “Widespread rainfall with heavy to very heavy falls at few places and extremely heavy falls at isolated places in the coastal districts of Saurashtra” till 0830 hrs on June 15, 2019, in RED colour, the highest risk colour code used by IMD. Further this warning adds: “Flooding of escape routes. Minor disruption of railways, overhead power lines and signalling systems.” Among action suggested it lists: “Inundation of low lying areas along the above mentioned coastal districts due to heavy rainfall and storm surge… Evacuation from low lying areas of the above mentioned Districts, coastal Hutment dwellers, urban slum dwellers and people staying in unsafe house to safer places.” The Ministry of Earth Sciences also sends out these releases through PIB Press Notes as IMD functions under MoES. Continue reading “Will Cyclone VAYU bring floods in Saurashtra, Kutch and South Rajasthan?” →