Rainfall in Northeast India has been quite disappointing for quite a few seasons now. In fact, if Monsoon rains for the entire country are to be considered, the stats are not painting a rosy picture as such. For the last five Monsoon seasons, it has just been the year 2016, which has seen normal Monsoon rains with just 3 percent of deficiency.
However, 2016 was not a great Monsoon for Northeast India as such. Assam and Meghalaya were deficient enough by 26 percent, while Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura (NMMT) saw 18 percent of deficiency. Meanwhile, Arunachal Pradesh was a slight better performer at -5 percent.
Monsoon 2017 was below normal for the country, but Northeast India had a skewed distribution with NMMT seeing 22 percent of surplus rains, Arunachal Pradesh recording rains deficient to the tune of -10 percent while Assam and Meghalaya being close to normal at -3 percent.
Thereafter, since the winters of 2018 until now, Northeast Monsoon has had four seasons of below normal rains and is surely heading for the fifth despite February looking like a good month in terms of rains for the region of the seven sisters.
The entire 2018 including winters, Pre-Monsoon, Monsoon as well as Post Monsoon seasons have seen large deficiencies in terms of rains. Last good season was the Post Monsoon season of 2017, i.e. between October and December wherein Arunachal Pradesh saw -10 percent of rains, Assam and Meghalaya were surplus with 20 percent and NMMT were largely surplus at 50 percent.
Let us take a look at the table which shows the last four seasons deficiencies/surplus (-/+) in % of the three subdivisions of Northeast India:
This winter has followed a similar track with the rainfall performance being even poorer than before. In fact, the month of January was very poor and as on February 6, i.e. between January 1 and February 6, Arunachal Pradesh is deficient by a whopping 84 percent i.e. 10.8 mm of rains against 69.7 mm, Assam and Meghalaya are all the worse at -90 percent i.e. 2.4 mm of rainfall against 22.6 mm and NMMT remain largely deficient with -82 percent i.e. 3.6 mm against 19.7 mm.
During the last week, Northeast India had seen some rainfall. Now, it seems like February may be a good month after all as rainy days are all set to make an appearance over Northeast India. Scattered rains will begin on February 8, which will become widespread in nature and moderate to heavy in intensity on February 9, particularly over Arunachal Pradesh. Scattered showers are also expected on February 10 over Northeast India
That’s not it as another rainy spell is likely around February 16. These rains may help in reducing the deficiency levels to a marginal extent. However, the winter season of 2019 may also end up on a deficient note.
Image Credit: india.com
Please Note: Any information picked from here must be attributed to skymetweather.com