Did you know almost 350 districts received less than 80% of the normal rainfall in the month of July. Did you know Tuticorin & Ramanathapuram have got the lowest rainfall this Southwest Monsoon 2015 so far. Read on for more interesting facts about Southwest Monsoon 2015
Southwest Monsoon 2015 has been going through a strange season with intense rainfall over few pockets of the country while a large part of the country goes through days without rains. The month of July pretty much showed this clearly. A recap on the Southwest Monsoon 2015 so far. We start with the Top 10 Districts
The Top districts is dominated by the North East & West Coast but crucially in the West Coast two districts Dakshin Kannada & North Goa despite being in the Top 10 are facing a deficit monsoon indicating the lopsided monsoon we are having this year
The Bottom 10 districts is dominated by districts from Tamil Nadu, possibly the only rain shadow region of the country. Interestingly Leh despite getting the 3rd lowest rainfall in the country is in excess
Now for a recap on which are the districts that have had a super Southwest Monsoon 2015 against their normal long term rainfall. This list is dominated by the desert region of Northwest India and West Madhya Pradesh in Central India. Unfortunately the excess rains in West Rajasthan has only resulted in flooding and has brought in no tangible benefits.
The worst performing districts provide a sad reading, crucial agricultural zone, Gangetic Plains, suffering this season so far. This is expected to become better as the “Well Marked Low” moves in a Westerly direction. 50% of the worst districts are from the composite Uttar Pradesh
Now for a recap on which of the districts performed the best during the month of July ’15 dominated by Central India and Gangetic West Bengal. Again an indication of the high intense rains concentrated in certain pockets. An indication of how much July rains are crucial to the West Coast is indicated by the fact that the top 2 districts are from Coastal Karnataka but despite such heavy rains both are actually less than normal rainfall.
So which were the districts that were extremely bad during July. It does look a very sorry set of data unfortunately while Tamil Nadu having low rainfall this time of the season is expected what is not expected is places in Maharashtra receiving not even 10 mm rainfall for the whole of July
A quick update on how the District wise Spatial Analysis has been evolving during the two months of Southwest Monsoon 2015. As one can observe July has seen 60% of the country receiving less than 80% of normal rainfall for the month.
And now let us compare the above table with a table made with slightly different parameters. As we all know IMD uses a band of -20% to 20% as normal rainfall, here we have divided the same band into three different categories, above normal, normal & below normal to give better representation of the rainfall pattern. About 54% of the country has received less than normal rainfall so far as things stand.
When one compares the same for the sub divisions a total of 22 out of 36 sub divisions have received below normal or worse rainfall even if one goes by the weighted average method of IMD. (Please click on the image for larger size table)
