Winter rains in India

Country saw a disappointing monsoon 2014, with an overall rainfall deficiency of 12%. The worst hit pockets were Punjab, Haryana and Marathwada with an alarming deficiency of 50%, 56% and 42% respectively. Post monsoon rains from October to December also remained short by 33% for the country. The only surplus pockets were East Uttar Pradesh and East Madhya Pradesh.  Punjab and Haryana continued to be deficit by 49% and 31% respectively. However, the Peninsular India in general and Tamilnadu in particular, where Post Monsoon rains matter the most, recorded near normal rainfall.

Winter rains are more prevalent and crucial as well, over North and East India. The two rainiest months of January and February observed few good wet spells.  The cumulative deficiency for these two months dropped to 9% for the country. However, untimely and uneven distribution of rainfall remained a sore point. While East and Northeast India remained deficit by over 40%, the State of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat accumulated huge surplus of exceeding 70%.  This excess rainfall along with extremely heavy rains in March has assumed damaging dimension for a large portion of North and Central India.

As per our numerical weather models, Skymet predicts the month of March to have more wet spells. This, also is likely to spill over to first half of April. It may be inferred that overall temperature may possibly remain below the average in the month of March and April.