The first month of Southwest Monsoon 2016 has come to and end as of yesterday. In what was creating a flutter in many a heart the monsoon set off with a delay of 8 days over Kerala and subsequently parking itself near Goa for more than a week. Subsequently thanks to the disturbance in Bay it covered up some of the last time and now only parts of Northwest India is still to come under the influence of Southwest Monsoon 2016. So here is how the first month of Southwest Monsoon 2016 has ended, a COMK review of June ’16.
Overall June’16 has ended with a deficit of 11% nationally which can be classified as deficient as things stand though there is still July & August which are peak monsoon months that could ensure we recover this deficit in double quick time.
Among the region it appears East India has a long way to go with major states like Jharkhand, Bihar in deficit while except for Sikkim all states from the region have recorded negative anomaly for the month of June’16. On the contrary in Southern Peninsula only Andaman & Pondicherry, both minor states, have recorded negative anomaly (though under the normal band) with all states recording positive anomaly during the first month of Southwest Monsoon 2016.
If one were to run a slightly deeper analysis of the numbers for Southwest Monsoon 2016 we can once again see how good the monsoon has been for South India with only 9 out of the 100 districts not recording normal rainfall. This indicates how fairly widespread the monsoon has been in the region possibly aided by the early fortnight thunderstorms across the region and subsequent Bay disturbance. Once again if we see the states with poorly distributed rainfall the list is dominated by states from East & Northeast India with Gujarat the odd man out being from the West of India. (Click the images for full size)
Interestingly the difference between the district that recorded the highest & lowest rainfall during the month of June is almost 132 cms, just short of the total annual rainfall of Chennai. The highest rainfall district list is dominated by the West Coast of Peninsular India with the Top 5 districts from the region. The district that should see the top spot going by average expected rainfall East Khasi Hills is only No.12 in the list indicating the possibly weaker than normal Southwest Monsoon 2016 so far. 4 districts have recorded above 100 cms as of June ’16 this year.
In another interesting tidbit 3 out of the 20 districts in the country with the least rainfall for June is from Tamil Nadu with all the three from South Tamil Nadu. Madurai, Tuticorin & Virudhunagar the three districts with this distinction have all recorded deficit or worse rainfall so far. (Click the images for full size)
In a surprising statistic Coimbatore a place that is possibly known only for pleasant winds during Monsoon but not so much rains is actually sitting proudly on top of the list of district that have seen the highest positive anomaly in terms of rainfall for the month of June. Coimbatore has recorded more 4 times the average expected rainfall during the period.
Call it a quirk of fate or otherwise if one runs the list of districts with highest negative anomaly 8 out of the 20 districts are from the extreme West & extreme East, Gujarat & Meghalaya respectively. Gujarat with 5 of the 20 worse districts possibly shows how important it is for Monsoon to move into Gujarat without any more delay.
Do share your feedback on this exercise and your suggestions so we could make it better when we do the next review of Southwest Monsoon 2016