Four month long southwest monsoon season reaches halfway mark having more ‘crowns’ than ‘flaws’. At the intermediate stage, the season has clocked 108% rainfall of the long period average (LPA). To be precise, at mid way mark, the season has recorded 480mm of rainfall against a normal of 445.8mm, an excess of 7.7%. Just to be abreast, opening month of June was a bit dampener for many sub divisions, outside Northeast India. Month as a whole, registered 152.3mm rainfall against normal of165.3mm, leaving a shortfall of 8% in the LPA.
July has covered the deficit of June and gone ahead to post a big win, for most parts of the country. Barring East &Northeast region, rest of the 3 homogenous regions, namely Northwest India, Central India and South Peninsula have witnessed more than normal rainfall. South India was an outlier with a massive gain of 28%, followed by Central Parts with a surplus of 17%. Northwest India was dragged very close to the margin with large deficit over Uttar Pradesh and a small shortfall in the mountains. East and Northeast India remained deficit by 16%, mostly on account of sizeable scarcity in the states of West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand. The only exception elsewhere was the state of Kerala coping with paucity of 26% during the 1st two months.
Month of July itself was the most rainiest since 2005. The month was surplus with 17% rainfall and gathered a massive total of 327.7mm against a normal of 280.5mm. It narrowly missed the quarter century record of collecting 333.7mm rainfall in July 2005. Also, July 2022 joins the club of rainiest month with over 300 mm rainfall, earlier achieved on 4 occasions since 1995. At mid way mark, standing tall in the list are the sub divisions of West Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana with respective large excess of 81%, 82% and 94%. The most vulnerable pockets of Gujarat, Marathwada and Vidarbha shooed away the perpetual threat of poor rains in the core monsoon rainfed zone of central parts. The agriculture bowl of Punjab and Haryana also broke the jinx of being ‘restricted’ states, year after year, to record big winning margins of over 20% excess rainfall.
