The recent horrific incident that claimed lives of eleven trekkers in Theni district of Tamil Nadu is a clear example of how badly the weather can play over a region. Spanning from 2013 to 2017, the number of forest fires in Tamil Nadu alone rose from 89 to 301 while for the country, it almost doubled from 18,451 in 2013 to 35,888 in 2017.
The persistent dry weather is expected to be the main culprit behind this forest blaze.
As per Skymet Weather, the state of Tamil Nadu generally receives rainfall during Northwest Monsoon while Southwest Monsoon is a comparatively shady period for the region. This year, however, the Northeast Monsoon for the state was rainfall deficient.
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On the top of this, the rainfall that the state generally receives during the winter months of January and February were also deficit. It was due to this, that dry weather kept on ruling the state and kept the temperatures on a higher side.
Theni, that shares its borders with Coimbatore on the north and Madurai in the south that have been experiencing similar weather conditions for the last many months. It is the dry spell and soaring mercury levels that led to forest fire particularly, the area near human inhabitation.
If the rainfall data for Tamil Nadu during both the periods is to be analyzed, then:
During the Northeast Monsoon, Theni was reeling under 22 percent rainfall deficiency alongside, Coimbatore and Madurai were also rainfall deficient by 45 and 32 percent respectively.
On the contrary, during the winter months of January and February, the entire state was 46% rainfall deficient. In addition to this, the month of March also did no wonders in eliminating the long-prevailing dry spell and until March 7, the state has recorded almost no rains, making the rainfall deficiency to climb a whopping 98%.
It is the cascading effect of this kind of dry season for the trees to shed leaves. A slight human intervention or due to some minor spark can lead to disastrous fire outage in the dry foliage which happened in the heart-wrenching incident in Theni on Sunday.
Image Credit: Mumbai Mirror
Any information taken from here should be credited to skymetweather.com
