Saturday, September 25, 2010

Rains this season create records in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur & Dehradun

Mumbai - breaking 50 year record

Monsoon has created a record of sorts this year. The rainfall witnessed is well on course to be ranked as the highest ever recorded in the city. There have been a number of intense rain spells, yet the city life has not been thrown out of gear even once. The data of monsoon witnessed between 1999 and 2009 indicates that there had been at least two rain days every year when the city life was halted, a senior official from the civic disaster management cell said. The Santa Cruz observatory has witnessed 3,309.2 mm rain this year, while the Colaba observatory has received 3,160.5 mm. A Met department officer said that with there being still some time before the monsoon withdraws, the rainfall-recorded is on course to be the highest ever. According to a senior official, the Santa Cruz observatory had recorded about 3,400mm rainfall in 2005, the year when an unprecedented rain event on July 26 saw a downpour of 944 mm. The second-highest rainfall recorded by the suburban observatory was 3,281.7 mm in 1958. The Met officials also suggested that the Colaba rainfall has already surpassed all rain records set in the past 50 years.

Dehra Dun - breaking 44 year record

The monsoon rainfall broke a 44-year-old record in Dehra Dun by registering a whopping 3088 mm of rainfall this season. Met Director Anand Sharma told PTI that the previous highest record was in 1966 when the Doon valley recorded 2930 mm of rainfall. Before 1966, records regarding monsoon rains are not available, he said. With heavy rains lashing Dehra Dun, several rivers in the valley were on spate which include Rispana, Bindal and Asan. Nine of the total 13 districts of Uttarakhand have received excess rainfall this monsoon season.

Jaipur - breaking 14 year record

Breaking a 14-year record, Jaipur received 781.2mm rain this year till Wednesday. Going by the Met department’s prediction, as the monsoon is still active in the state and will last till the end of the month, the figure is likely to change in the coming few days. According to officials of Indian Meteorological Department, Jaipur receives around 500 mm rainfall in normal circumstances. The last time it had rained so much was in 1996, when the showers had been plentiful to the point of becoming an abnormality. Jaipur city had then received 850 mm rain between June and September. Looking at the conditions of this year, Jaipur is heading towards and abnormal spell of monsoon. "The district has already received 40% rain in excess of the normal this year," an irrigation official said. The comparison becomes obvious with last year's rainfall chart when Jaipur received less than 300 mm rain and had to be included among the scarcity-hit districts of the state.

Delhi - breaking 32 year record

Records shows this is the wettest monsoon in Delhi since 1978. Rainfall since June 1 has touched 1004mm higher than 965.1mm recorded during the monsoon of 1978. Sunday's rain also took Delhi's rainfall during September to 250.6mm, the highest since 1998 when 280.4 mm was recorded. Last year, the figure had settled at 588 mm. Delhi recorded 455.1 mm rain in August, more than double its normal average of 225.8 mm. With 10 days remaining in the month, September too is poised to break records having recorded around 280mm more than normal.


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