Despite 143 mm rain, Kol ends June with 49% deficit
Times of India | 1 July 2024
Kolkata: Even as Kolkata has been getting light to moderate rain with some one or two heavy spells in between in the last few days, it still ended June with a rain deficit of 49%. The June rain shortage for the rest of Gangetic Bengal is even higher at 67%. The Met office sees more rain on the radar.
“Conditions are still favourable for spells of light to moderate to continue in Kolkata for the next few more days.This will prevent the mercury from rising,” said a weather scientist at Regional Meteorological Centre Kolkata.
The Alipore weather office has alerted heavy rain in some other districts, including South and North 24 Parganas.
Climatologically, the normal rain count of 272.4 mm for June is considered normal for Kolkata. Even as the 75 mm of rain on Saturday took the cumulative rain count to around 143 mm, the shortage remained.
Meteorologists have cited the late entry of monsoon in south Bengal and the feeble monsoon current since its arrival as reasons behind the deficit. The arrival of the southwest monsoon was delayed by almost a week this year.
“Whenever monsoon arrives late, we tend to get this kind of rain shortage. While south Bengal has rain deficit, some north Bengal areas have recorded surplus,” said the Met official.
This, however, is the fourth June in the past one decade to incur rain shortage. Only June 2021, 2020 and 2018 had rain surplus in the city, the highest being June 2018 with a cumulative rain amount of 419.7 mm. The all-time record of wettest June in Kolkata according to IMD is June 1984 when the city received a total of 946.2 mm rain during the month.
While the 24-hour highest rain for June in the past 10 years was on June 26, 2018 — when Kolkata was pounded by 162.6 mm of rain — during this June, Saturday was the wettest day of the month with 75 mm rain.
On Sunday, the maximum temperature dipped further to 30.3 degrees Celsius to stay 2.3 degrees below the normal mark. The minimum balanced around the normal at 27 degrees.