December, January and February are taken as winter months, more prominently for North India. Central and eastern parts also follow the same, albeit with short and long spurts of cold interspersed during the season. Mercury levels do rise to the comfort zone in between with minimum placed in the teens and maximum exceeding 25°C quite often.
Pan India rainfall during winter months hints at February being the rainiest and December-January nearly equitable. Monthly normal rainfall for these months stand at 17.4mm, 17.3mm and 23.5mm for December, January and February respectively. Northeast monsoon has a major share during December and is replaced by western disturbance rainfall over north and eastern parts in Jan and Feb.
Bumper rains have been received Pan-India so far. Residual effect of Northeast Monsoon over South Peninsula and passage of active western disturbances across hills and plains of North India has placed the Indian region under large excess, so far in January. Between 01st and 18thJan 2022, total of 31.2mm of rainfall has been recorded against the normal of 9.3mm. Excess rains have been witnessed over entire region barring few sub divisions of Madhya Maharashtra, Marathwada, Karnataka, Kerala and North Bengal.
Even with 31.2mm rainfall received so far, January 2022 becomes the rainiest since 2005 when it registered deluge of 39.8mm. In the last 100years, since 1921, January 1943 has been the rainiest with 56.8mm of rainfall. Since then, there have been 11 instances when the monthly rainfall exceeded mark of 30mm. Least rainfall of 4.4mm was recorded in 1946. Jan 2022 is racing past to catch up with the earlier record of 2005 and it may do so by 31Jan22.
The decade of 50’s was the rainiest and practically every 2nd year witnessed downpour. The least rainiest has been the last decade between 2010-2020. An active western disturbance is arriving shortly over mountains of North India. Its induced circulation will also pound the entire plains of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh between 21st-23rdJan. Upcoming 3 days spell may well be succeeded by yet another round, towards fag end of the month. Jan 2022 has a fair chance to upgrade and move up in the list of records.