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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, Sept. 28

The southwest monsoon will end this year’s season with a surplus of five per cent (three per cent till last week) on the back of a scorching late-in-the-season run powered by ‘low’ twins to the east and west of the country.

This rare rally saw it dump an unprecedented 40 per cent area-weighted surplus rain week-on-week with Saurashtra topping the chart with +540 per cent in the west and the Gangetic West Bengal +415 per cent in the east.

Thirty Met subdivisions recorded excess or normal rainfall, with deficits being limited to the rest six in north and northwest India. The whole of Uttar Pradesh ended up in the red, with the Met subdivision of west Uttar Pradesh being the hardest hit at -40 per cent.

All six subdivisions ran the deficit almost throughout the season. The break-up is as follows; Himachal Pradesh (-36 per cent); Punjab (-28 per cent); Haryana (-33 per cent); west Uttar Pradesh (-40 per cent); east Uttar Pradesh (-22 per cent) and east Madhya Pradesh (-32 per cent).

Even the latest rally could not make much impression, with the causative monsoon system in east India petering out sooner than expected. The fact that the deficit subdivisions are irrigated to varying extents is a saving grace.

This year’s rains have been better than expected after official forecasts in June predicted the country as a whole would receive 93 per cent of the normal rainfall. The surplus monsoon would leave good moisture conditions for winter crops are sown in November.

Meanwhile, early indications by international models on weather for the October-November-December quarter suggest that winter rains would be deficient in extreme south Tamil Nadu, but above average in parts of central India and almost the whole of east India.

But rainfall for the quarter in north and northwest India brought about by passing western disturbances will range between average and less than average. As for mercury, a cold snap will extend from the whole of Gujarat and southwest Rajasthan to the east over Madhya Pradesh, parts of Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and the North-eastern States.

Current weather trends in the northwest indicate that the westerlies fanning across Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan into west Rajasthan are bringing drying, and a slow withdrawal of the monsoon and its rain. According to Mr Jim Andrews of AccuWeather.com, it would seem that between one third and one half of the subcontinent will be outside of the sway of the monsoon.

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Deficit rainfall in North, northwest

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