City crosses rain target despite deficit in August

MUMBAI: As of 8.30am on Monday morning, Mumbai had recorded a total of 2,218mm of rainfall this monsoon season (since June 1). This exceeds the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) forecast of normal rainfall of 2,205mm, with six weeks of the monsoon still to go.

However, Mumbai’s rainfall deficit for August so far stands at minus 59%, with just 134.2mm of rain being recorded at IMD’S observatory in Santacruz, as opposed to the normal rainfall of 330mm.

This monsoon in Mumbai has been marked by alternating phases of heavy and widespread rainfall, interspersed with long, subdued dry spells, as opposed to the rainfall uniformly spread out over the season.

Between July 16 and 19, for instance, the city saw two back to back high-rainfall events that killed over 30 people and dumped a whopping 30% of the total seasonal rainfall over Mumbai in just three days. The previous month, Mumbai got 43.6% of June’s average rain in just nine hours. This pattern, experts, officials, and even the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warn, bears not only a climate change signature but is likely to get pronounced in coming years.

Officials said the chances of heavy rains in Mumbai will increase within the next 48 hours, and IMD has placed the city under a ‘yellow’ category storm alert for Wednesday, indicating that heavy rainfall in isolated locations is “very likely”. Parts of Marathwada and Vidarbha – where eight districts are still seeing below normal rains this season – will benefit significantly more during the next few days of rains, according to officials and experts. “IMD has issued heavy rainfall warnings for Maharashtra for the coming three days, especially for Marathwada. It will be good for farmers in that region, who are waiting for a good spell of rain for their crops,” KS Hosalikar, head of IMD’S surface instrument division in Pune, said.

“On August 17, most of Vidarbha, Parbhani, Hingoli, Jalna, Nanded, Aurangabad, Jalgaon, Dhule, Nashik and Nandurbar will receive light to moderate rain, which is expected to continue on 18 August,” tweeted Akshay Deoras, meteorologist and PHD researcher at the University of Reading, England.