Unseasonal Rains are a major issue for the farming community. As regular weather watchers over the past few years the usage of Unseasonal Rains destroying Orange / Grape crops over parts of Maharashtra during the months of January / February would always trigger thoughts about how the regular occurence of western disturbance influenced Rains / Hailstorms do not necessarily make it unseasonal any more and how do we realign cropping cycle to minimize impact of these “Unseasonal Rains”.
The events over parts of Delta districts the past week raises a similar question to the Paddy Farmers of the “Rice Bowl of Tamil Nadu.” With North Indian Ocean Basin continuing to remain abnormally warm any rainfall episode is likely to get enhanced due to the availability of high moisture on account of the warm oceans. As often it has been repeated extremes are becoming the new normal in the context of the warmer than ever before oceans.
The challenge before the farming community whether they are growing grapes in Nasik or Rice in Nidamangalam therefore will be to evolve not only their farming practices & cropping cycles but also become a weather wise community using scientific reasoning as well to take into account unseasonal rains / delayed monsoon withdrawal etc in the coming days.
While the next 3 / 4 days are likely to be mostly dry across Tamil Nadu & most of Peninsular India the Upper Air Cyclonic Circulation currently seen over the Equatorial waters near Sumatra is likely to bring the next spell of rains later this week as it moves west towards Sri Lanka. With MJO likely to influence events over Indian Ocean even though bulk of it may benefit the seas south of Equator the spill over effect is enough to trigger fairly heavy spell of rains in a few places particularly those falling under the wind convergence zone due to the presence of drier continental winds over the Northern parts of Peninsular India.