NEW DELHI: Northern India has been hit by an abnormally significant amount of rain recently, which has caused a week of floods, landslides, and death. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has looked at data and found that the weather event was quite bad. In some of the worst-hit districts, the amount of rain that fell was two to three times what is normal for the rainiest week of the monsoon season.
HT reports that a review of the IMD’s gridded dataset shows that the week ending August 29 was historically wet for the northern parts of India. This week, the rain in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab was the most it had been since 1901, which is the oldest year for which data is available. Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand also had some of the most rain this week, coming in seventh and eighth place, respectively.
When you compare the amount of rain to the Long Period Average (LPA) from 1971 to 2020, it shows how bad the event was even more. In Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Jammu & Kashmir, the rain last week was two to four times the LPA for the week.
This rain is especially surprising because it happened after the monsoon season’s peak, which generally happens in the first half of August in these areas. The week ending August 29 was 1.5 times as rainy as the rainiest week on the LPA chart for Uttarakhand, 2.3 times for Himachal Pradesh, 2.5 times for Jammu & Kashmir, and a remarkable 2.8 times for Punjab. This shows that the areas got a lot of rain, not just for this time of year, but also compared to any other week of the year.
The numbers show how much stress the region’s infrastructure is under. In Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab, it rained more than half a month’s worth in just one week. For example, Punjab got 82% of its typical rainfall for the whole month of August, while Himachal Pradesh got 62% and Jammu & Kashmir got 72%.
The amount of rain was exceptional, yet the calamities that followed were not always inescapable. The research says that better and earlier transmission of weather forecasts could have saved lives. Also, developing infrastructure with the possibility of these kinds of extreme weather occurrences in mind could lower long-term hazards. Many of the places that are most likely to be affected by climate-related disasters don’t have these preventive measures in place, as many reports have pointed out.