The West Coast of the country happens to be the rainiest pocket in the country during the Monsoon season. The coast consists of three subdivisions including Coastal Karnataka, Kerala and Konkan and Goa.
Out of these, Coastal Karnataka is the rainiest with the average Monsoon rains at 3084 mm rain, close behind is the Konkan and Goa region at 2915 mm while Kerala is slightly behind at 2040 mm. For all these three pockets, the months of June and July are the rainiest pockets. Meanwhile, rainfall recedes for Kerala in August with September witnessing the lowest rains.
The state of Kerala sees good rains of 650 mm in June, July is even better at 726 mm while August is slightly lower at 420 mm.
As far as the Pre-Monsoon season is concerned, the state of Kerala does record some good rains during this period as well. However, the Pre-Monsoon rains do not have any subsequent bearing on the Monsoon rains or not is the question here. In fact, the state does not even have any linkage towards the performance of Monsoon over the entire country.
Good or bad rains in the month of march over Kerala are no indicator for further scenario in the month of April. For instance, last year, march rains were extremely good, but April witnessed 52 percent deficiency. Usually, if the month of March is good in terms of rains, April happens to be poor.
In the year 2013, March saw 64% surplus rains while April was deficient at 55%. Similarly, in 2014, March saw 41 percent deficiency but April was normal. This year, March was surplus with 57 percent while April until today is deficient at 40 percent. As far as the monthly rains are concerned, March sees 30.4 mm of rains, while April sees 109.5 mm, almost three and a half times more.
Similarly, Pre-Monsoon conditions over the country point towards the coming Monsoon. In fact, these are also taken into account for forecasting the Monsoon season. But as far as Kerala is concerned, there is no such strong linkage as such. In the year 2013, April saw 55 percent deficient rains while rains during Monsoon were 26 percent surplus. The countrywide rains during the same period were at 6 percent surplus.
2015, which was a drought year, resulted in 95 percent surplus rains in April for Kerala, and 26 percent deficiency in Monsoon. Thus, on the whole, good March in terms of rains does not mean that April will be the same. Same goes for good Pre-Monsoon which does not indicate a good Monsoon.
Image Credit: keralabackwaters
Please Note: Any information picked from here must be attributed to skymetweather.com