Wettest monsoon in north India in 12 years

ANI file photo

New Delhi: At 21% above normal, north India has so far recorded its wettest monsoon since 2013, the year of the cataclysmic Kedarnath flash flood. Worryingly, in Aug, the region has experienced by far the highest number of ‘extremely heavy’ rain events since the India Meteorological Department (IMD) began collating this data in 2021.Till Aug 25, north India had logged 21 extremely heavy rain events, a 50% rise over the previous highest of 14 recorded last year, even though that month had registered higher rainfall. The number of such events is likely to rise further by the end of the month, making this Aug’s monsoon among the most destructive in the region in recent years.’Extremely heavy’ is IMD’s highest category of daily rainfall recorded at a weather station, defined as over 204.5mm in 24 hours.This monsoon, north India is the only one among India’s four regions to register a rain surplus in all three months (June, July, Aug) of the season so far – another first for the North since 2013.”In the last two months, northwest India (IMD nomenclature for north India) has seen high rainfall activity mainly because of frequent interactions between western disturbances and monsoon currents from Bay of Bengal and sometimes from Arabian Sea. When these two currents meet over the region, a lot of rain takes place,” said Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, IMD chief.North India (or northwest India) is a meteorological region comprising states/UTs of J&K, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, UP and Rajasthan. Mohapatra said most of the extreme rain events in north India had taken place in the two hill states and the UT of J&K.The extreme rainfall data for the region reveals that while Aug last year had more ‘heavy’ (64.4-115.5mm) and ‘very heavy’ (115.5-204.4mm) rain events, it recorded far less number of ‘extremely heavy’ rainfall episodes than Aug this year. Last year, north India had reported its wettest month of Aug in 28 years since 1996, with the region as a whole logging 256.4mm of rain. The current month has so far (till Aug 26) reported 209.4mm, with five days still to go.”Due to formation of a trough in eastern Pakistan, the region has received a lot of rain in the past four days. The spell is likely to continue for one or two more days,” Mohapatra said.The last three days have been the wettest in north India this monsoon season, with August 25 alone logging 21.8mm of rain, four times higher than the normal of 5.6mm for the day.