The months of January, February and March are considered crucial to account for winter rain over the agro intensive northern states of Punjab and Haryana. Weather systems this season remained quite conspicuous and so left a volley of inexplicable issues, in terms of their behavior and characteristics. Earlier, frequent storms in the Bay of Bengal had prevented the Western Disturbances (WDs) to take their normal track across Pakistan and Jammu & Kashmir. Effectively, it was only towards the second half of December, when WDs ushered much awaited rain and snow across Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh and winter showers over northern plains.
In the backdrop of such situation, the season commenced with deficient rain over Punjab and Haryana. Inspite of few good spells in January and February, due to the passage of WDs; the deficiency could not be covered completely and remained at 18% for Punjab and 15% for Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi. Also, for these two months, the spacial distribution remained highly uneven, wherein, Malwa region of Punjab remained deficit by almost 50% and Majha and Doaba areas were generally surplus by over 40%. Some of the districts like Amritsar and Jalandhar observed a deficiency of over 50%. Similarly, pockets in Haryana, particularly those, contiguous to Delhi had an excess of 50% of rain. However, western and central parts remained deficit by equal margin. The national capital recorded rainfall, well above the average, and more so in February, when it was 103 mm against a normal of 20 mm.
According to Skymet Meteorological Division in India the month of March saw excess rainfall, both over Punjab and Haryana. The sub- division of Punjab recorded 23% excess rain. Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi division observed, double the normal rainfall. The cumulative rainfall of three months from January to March for Delhi (NCR) was thrice the average rainfall. The overall deficiency got substantially covered for Haryana, Chandigarh & Delhi but remained marginally deficit for Punjab.
