The South-West monsoon drawing to a close with a deficit of 14 per cent during El Nino year 2015 made it the first time in almost five decades that the country has endured two drought years on a trot.
A study on monsoon performance showed that the country witnessed a consecutive drought year last in 1965-66 preceded by a similar event in1904-05.
The country has had 19 abundant monsoon years, 24 drought years 101 normal monsoon years till date.
In any given year, the probability of a drought is 17 per cent and that of a normal monsoon is 83 per cent.
Of the 19 abundant monsoon years, eight years were associated with the La Nina phenomenon. But here too the earlier caveat applies – not every surplus monsoon year need to be a La Nina year.
Pays no heed It was on April 22 this year that India Met Department had predicted that rainfall during monsoon for the country as a whole would be deficient (93 per cent of the long period average).
On June 2, the Met office downgraded the forecast to 88 per cent of the long period average. Its estimate of 12 per cent deficit was overshot by only two percentage points.
It goes to the credit of the Met that it should have stuck to the outlook of a deficit monsoon paying no heed to the false alarms triggered by intervening rain surges in June and July.
It was also the first time that the Met had forecast a deficit monsoon year and got it right, though, according to top Met sources they ‘would have liked to be proven wrong.’
Late rain surge Global forecasts had indicated that North-West and Central India would be the worst-hit with deficit this year. This too has been proved right with recorded deficits of 17 per cent and 16 per cent respectively.
South Peninsula came in at 15 per cent while the deficit is eight per cent in East and North-East.
Central India and South Peninsula gained from a late surge from a monsoon even as it had started withdrawing from north-west India.
Meanwhile, the withdrawal has picked up momentum overnight on Thursday with the monsoon exiting most parts of Uttar Pradesh, some parts of Madhya Pradesh, east Gujarat and north Arabian Sea.
The withdrawal is likely to run into some resistance from further south as rain-generating cyclonic circulations are active both in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.