Monsoon this year had seen a dry spell and after forty-five days of the onset of the season, it is starting to rain again. Though region wise it differs the amount of rainfall and at what time the place will get rainfall, experts believe that the rains in the coming two weeks would be crucial for the agricultural sector, wrote Abhishek Jha for HT.
It is important to note that the official monsoon season of India accounts from the month of June till September and to measure the adequacy of the rainfall, the comparison is done with the Long Period Average (LPA) of the rainfall. The LPA is the average rainfall in the fifty-year period between 1961 and 2010.
According to the analysis by HT Times, the regional variation for rainfall persists this year as well. Some states have received excess rain while others have received either meager or a minimal amount of rainfall.
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Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, four north-eastern states (Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh), and Odisha had a deficit in cumulative rainfall up to July 15. The rest of the country has received either normal or excess rainfall.
The difference in rainfall also exists within states of the same region.
- The eastern half of Uttar Pradesh has received normal or excess rainfall.
- The western half (such as the districts of Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Bulandshahar, Ghaziabad, and Gautam Buddha Nagar) has a deficit in cumulative rainfall.
- In Punjab, all districts except Moga, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, and Gurdaspur have a deficit.
The long-delayed monsoon also reached the capital city in its full vigour. People had to face traffic jams throughout the day. The city’s adjoining areas like Gurgaon and Faridabad have also received rainfall reported NDTV on 13th July.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) tweeted, “Thunderstorm with light to moderate intensity rain and winds with speed of 20-40 km/h would occur over and adjoining areas of most places of Delhi, NCR (Bahadurgarh, Gurugram, Faridabad, Loni Dehat, Noida) Gohana, Sonipat, Rohtak (Haryana) Khekra (UP) during next 2 hours.”
Before the monsoon hit Delhi, the water level in the Yamuna river had seen an all-time low and fell to the limit of 667 feet which is the lowest since 1965. On the other hand, many states have been facing flash floods. 13 deaths were reported due to a cloud outburst in Himachal Pradesh this week.
Central Water Commission (CWC) informed that as of July 15, rivers were flowing above the danger mark in seven districts, six of which were situated in north Bihar.
It is also the state which had received the most amount of rainfall till June with 111 percent of excess rainfall. “Rains were excess because of the Monsoon trough being closer to the foothills, resulting in continued heavy weather activity in the state” reported Skymetweather.
The monsoon’s delay from June 20 and July 12 had also affected the growth of crops this year. “Only 46.6% of the area that is normally sown during the Kharif season was covered.
This is 5.9 percentage points lower than the 52.5% area sown by July 9 in 2020 but higher than the 2018 and 2019 numbers. Among different types of crops, only sugarcane has done better this year compared to 2020,” wrote the HT Times.
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