Chennai has been the hot topic of the year with its news-making drought. The water scarcity turned so huge in June that even many big IT companies had to shut their doors for employees and ask them to work from home instead. On 19 June 2019, Chennai city officials declared that "Day Zero", or the day when almost no water is left, had been reached.
In fact, Southwest Monsoon is not the rainiest season for Chennai. This is when the city receives a meagre 20% of its total precipitation for the year. Moreover, Chennai is located in the rain shadow area and doesn’t see much rains in this season. Taking a look at the figures, the city receives 55.8 mm in June, 103.8 mm in July and 126.8 mm in the month of August. This is comparatively very less than the other areas of the country.
Moreover, this year the season didn’t start well for Chennai either with the first half of June turning rather weak. July performed satisfactorily. However, August underperformed yet again.
Just like Delhi, Chennai too has two weather observatories, the one at Nungambakkam being the representative one.
Last fortnight, it rained on all days in Chennai, however, the rains were mainly light to moderate. Yet, the performance has fell short. We are already in the last week of August and Chennai has only received a total of 74 mm in the month till now.
If we take the entire Chennai district into consideration, it has turned out rather better rain-wise and has received excess rains in the season so far. It received 341.6 mm of rains against the normal of 277 mm. This is 23% more than the average figure for the district. These rains have definitely eased out the situation and has given a resort from the ongoing situation to some extent.
Looking ahead at the forecast; the remaining days of August will only see light rains. No fresh weather system seems to be affecting the region at present. Therefore, no significant rainfall is forecast for Chennai as of now.
However, for any significant rains, Chennai will have to wait till the last week of October until the arrival of Northeast Monsoon.
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Any information taken from here should be credited to Skymet Weather