Both the months of July and August are core Monsoon months. In fact, while the month of July contributes to about 33 percent of overall Pan India Monsoon rains, August contributes 30 percent, which when combined is about two thirds of the total Monsoon rains.
If both of these months perform well, Southwest Monsoon invariably sails through and does well. The reason for not relying on the month of June and September is that both of these months are onset and variable months and are subject to several constraints.
The Southwest Monsoon truly peaks in the month of July. Thus, if July does not perform well, some anxious moments remain but August still remains a backup month and it can catch up with some good rains.
While 50 percent of the time, both July and August are good performers, the other half of the time, Monsoon rains are not as good. Both of these months act as compensatory months. If the month of July does not do well, August comes to the rescue and vice versa.
If both of these months fail, there are large chances of Monsoon remaining highly deficient and even becoming drought years. Any deficiency of 10 percent of more in both these months calls for trouble for Southwest Monsoon.
The month of July contributes 289 mm of rain while August gives 261 mm of rainfall.
The table below shows the years when either July or August has acted as a compensatory month resulting in an overall good performance of Monsoon:
Meanwhile, there have been times when Monsoon has not performed well both in July and August and it has turned to a drought year.
The table below shows below par performance of July and August in years which have furthermore resulted in drought years:
El Nino years also have a tendency to cause failures along with several other reasons.
Talking about this year, June ended with a deficiency of 5 percent while July ended with 6 percent deficiency. These deficiencies are not alarming if rest of the months perform.
However, the first week of August has also been deficient and the Pan India deficiency remains at -10 percent. The lower the deficiency pertains, situation becomes all the more alarming.
There has been some improvement in the past two to three days due to the depression over Northwest Bay, but the access of the system is limited to East India. Thus, situation does not seem like a good one for the country.
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Please Note: Any information picked from here must be attributed to skymetweather.com
