Dry South Peninsula drags overall rainfall figure into deficit

Overall monsoon performance for the country has slipped into the red on Friday, with a growing rainfall deficit in the South Peninsula entering double digits.

Rainfall for the country as a whole is now showing a deficit of one per cent thanks to the ‘drag’ effect from the South Peninsula, where the shortfall was assessed at 10 per cent as of Friday.

In contrast, full-blown monsoon prevail conditions prevailed over East India and lately over parts of Central India and adjoining North-West India with a ‘deep depression’ digging its heels.

It is rare for a deep depression to retain its strength into a second day when it has travelled over land (and not the sea) during the preceding 24 hours.

This is because storm systems such as depression/deep depression draw their strength from the moisture they mop up from the sea surface.

The extended life of the existing deep depression can be traced only to the generous supply of moisture it has managed to pipe in from the Bay of Bengal even while being over land.

The India Met Department said in an update that the deep depression may weaken during the next 24 hours, an outlook shared by global weather models as well.

It located the system on Friday to over extreme North Madhya Pradesh and adjoining South Uttar Pradesh.

It is expected to move westwards towards East Rajasthan/Gujarat.

During the 24 hours ending in the morning, it had set up ‘vigorous’ monsoon conditions over East Madhya Pradesh, marked by heavy to very heavy rain and isolated extremely heavy rain.

Heavy rain was also reported from East Uttar Pradesh and Gangetic West Bengal.

The rains are now forecast to spread out to West Madhya Pradesh, East Rajasthan and Gujarat, the Met said. Meanwhile, an extended fortnighlty outlook (valid from August 19 to September 1) by the Met, Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, had to say the following:

Normal or above normal rainfall is likely to occur over East Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Konkan and Goa.

Normal or above normal rainfall is likely to occur in either of the next two weeks over Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, West Rajasthan, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Maharashtra, Vidarbha, Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Below normal rainfall is likely to occur during the next two weeks over Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Marathwada, Telangana, Rayalaseema and Karnataka.

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