It has been a bad southwest monsoon for Tamil Nadu. The state received 24 per cent deficient rainfall.
However, the state’s mainstay is northeast monsoon (October-December), which has been behaving well since 2004.
And so the weatherman hopes that the state will not suffer water shortage.
“It was a disappointing season for Tamil Nadu. We expected rains to pick up in August and September. But it did not happen.
Fortunately there was some rain during the last three days. Overall, the state received the lowest rainfall in any subdivision,” said Dr Y.E.A. Raj, deputy director general of meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC).
He added that except for Theni, Nilgiris and Tiruvannamalai, where the rainfall was on the positive side of the normal, the rest of the districts recorded only negative rainfall.
“Certain districts like Thoothukudi (-99 per cent), Tirunelveli (-74 per cent), Virudhunagar (-59 per cent), Karur (-58 per cent), Perambalur (-49 per cent) and Kanyakumari (-46 per cent) received very poor rainfall,” he said.
Overall, the state realised 25 cm rainfall as against normal of 32 cm in the southwest monsoon season this year. The absolute deficit rainfall was 7 cm, which is 24 per cent less than normal.
Experts say that the northeast monsoon raises the water table level while the southwest rains arrests the declining water level caused due to dry spell from second half of January till June.
“Last year, we experienced a deficit of only 6 per cent rains in the southwest monsoon season. This time, the monsoon performance had been very poor, but still we managed stay afloat due to 23 per cent excess rainfall received during northeast monsoon last year,” Dr Raj said. Since 2004, we have had abundant rainfall during northeast monsoon season and it can be similar this time too, he added.
‘Nowcasting’ to update rainfall data every 3 hours
Cuddalore’s K. Chinnasamy can never forget cyclone Thane, which damaged his standing paddy crop.
“If only I had known about the cyclone two days earlier, I would have harvested my crop and stored it safely,” he said.
In a bid to help farmers like Chinnasamy and also to provide valuable and timely weather inputs to fishermen, the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) in Chennai has planned to start ‘Nowcasting,’ where the data on rainfall and weather will be made available on the website updated every three hours from October 15.
“It will also help manage traffic in the urban and semi-urban areas,” said a senior meteorologist. He added that people could change their local travel plans with respect to the frequent weather updates, as it could be raining heavily in some parts of the city and the remaining areas could be dry.
“We will do this weather update on a trial basis from October 15 till the end of the northeast monsoon season.
It will be available online at www.imdchennai.gov.in,” said Dr Y. E. A. Raj, deputy director general of meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC). He said the RMC was also planning to provide periodical weather information to the public through SMS.