Southwest Monsoon 2021 made an arrival with lots of punctuality this time during the initial stage, behaving very well during the first two phases of its arrival. However, during the last arrival leg, it had a staggered entry with its arrival over Delhi at July 13 against its normal arrival of around June 28.
Monsoon variability this season has been very large. After the collapse it had during the month of June, it recovered in the month of July. This is why August started with the deficiency being at nil. The deficiency which had grown to a whopping 9 percent, recovered in July taking it to a normal stage.
But then August has seen more breaks in comparison to rainfall activities. The longest break was between August 1 which ended only on August 19, with only very little rain in some parts of the country, very unlike the usual August behaviour. For more than 10 days, the deficiency was in excess of 40 percent for the month, which has led to the scenario where the deficiency has built up to 10 percent as of now.
The states that have suffered the most are the either corner of the country including Punjab in North India, Gujarat in Western part of the country, Odisha in East India and Kerala in South India. The worst hit out of all these states is Gujarat, where all the pockets including North, South Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch, all of them are in the deficient zone as of now. Even the pocket adjacent to this region i.e. West Rajasthan is also highly deficient.
The drought prone pockets as of now look to be Gujarat and West Rajasthan. The other pockets may not have a drought like condition, but it seems highly unlikely that the deficiency in Gujarat will be covered.
While Punjab has less rains, the irrigation side is covered well enough for the state to not face any agricultural issue. Talking about Kerala, a deficiency of 5-10 percent is usually not a concern as the state sees plenty of rainfall. However, this time the deficient figures have reached up to a whopping 30 percent.
As far as Odisha is concerned, the state does not see rain deficiency usually during the Monsoon season. In the last few years also, the state has seen normal or above normal rains as whatever system which form in Bay of Bengal have to cross the state, which saves it from the blues of below normal conditions.
This time however, there haven’t been enough formation of systems in the Bay because of which Odisha has not seen enough rains resulting in deficiency.