Winter rains over Punjab and Haryana

Southwest monsoon disappointed both the agro intensive states of Punjab and Haryana miserably. While the seasonal deficiency over Punjab was 50%, Haryana ended up with a shortage of 56%, amounting to drought like situation for the pockets. Punjab received meagre 244 mm rainfall against the normal of 492 mm and Haryana recorded a dismal low of 203 mm against an average of 466 mm. Woes did not end here and the post monsoon rains for the month of October and November followed same track and remained rather poor. Punjab had a deficiency of 73% in October and 88% in November. Haryana followed closely with deficiency of 40% in October and 96% in November.

December and January are considered as rainiest winter months. Contrary to the expectations of at least conciliatory improvement, the scenario remained grim so far. The seasonal deficiency from 01 October to 31 December 2014 was observed at 49% for Punjab and 31% for Haryana. Punjab has recorded 20.7 mm of rainfall against a normal of 41 mm and Haryana had similar amounts against an average of 30 mm. Cumulative rainfall of these three months is a repeat performance of the previous two months.

Most of Majha and Doaba region remained deficient or scanty, with deficiencies as large as 85% or more for Amritsar , Tarantaran and Ferozepore and 40- 60% for Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur. Kapurthala was the only exception with a near normal rainfall of 41 mm against an average of 47 mm. The entire Malwa region which suffered a deficiency of 80-90% at many places till November, showed recovery and Patiala, Ropar, Sangrur and Mohali recorded normal cumulative rainfall for the three months. However, Bhatinda and Mansa still remained scanty with large deficit of about 75%.

State of Haryana had a mixed bag with areas bordering East Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi/ NCR staging a comeback and regions adjacent to South Punjab and Rajasthan observing large deficiency. Ambala, Karnal, Yamunanagar and Panchkula are now in excess of rainfall by 30-40%, while Sonepat, Panipat, Jind and Hisar are scanty with a shortfall of more than 60%.

Northern plains are expected to have moderate rains between 21^st and 23^rd January 2014. Hopefully this will recover the existing deficiency to some extent.