Moody rains: 8mm/day in 1st 3 weeks, 63mm/day in next 3

Panaji: Abundant rainfall recently has converted a huge deficit into a surplus. But a stark contrast has highlighted two epochs of the six-week season so far — the first three weeks yielded just 175+ mm of rain but the next three a bumper rainfall of 1,390+ mm.

On Friday, the seasonal total had touched 1,566.8mm, as against the normal of 1,388.7mm. The figure represents a modest surplus of 12%.

This means the weak monsoon activity produced just around 175mm of rainfall, an average of 8mm per day from June 1 till June 22 in the first epoch.

In the more vigorous 22-day second epoch that triggered disaster in many parts of the state from June 23 to July 14, the copious rainfall yielded a massive 1,390mm, an average of 63mm per day.

“The monsoon distribution of rainfall should have been uniform in space and time but its delayed onset over Kerala on June 8 and in Goa on June 11 and weak activity thereafter marked the first epoch,” said M R Ramesh Kumar, a meteorologist and a former NIO chief scientist. Kumar added, “But the intensity and extreme rainfall events significantly increased almost eightfold during the second epoch.”

The torrential spell during the second epoch created flood-like conditions in several parts of Goa. “With ideal synoptic conditions, the state was under a deluge, as it received copious rainfall on three days — June 28 (142mm), July 6 (131.2mm), and July 14 (121.2mm),” Kumar said.

The very heavy rainfall — with extremely heavy spells in some rain gauge stations — caused unprecedented flooding, especially in Margao and Panaji, and tree crashes and landslides across the state. A 7-8km stretch along the western bypass was submerged on Margao’s periphery.

The first epoch after poor pre-monsoon rainfall and the delayed monsoon had pushed the mercury high, causing much discomfort and delaying agricultural operations.


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