Rainfall data of Mar2013

Almost all landslides in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya are triggered by rain and therefore one of STH's primary role over the years has been to monitor rainfall. In so doing, we check rainfall on the IMD AWS stations and also track rainfall on our own small network of automatic rainfall gauges (ARGs) which we have installed at 4 places - a fifth ARG will also be up and running by end of April2013 in Mangan (North Sikkim). The locations of our ARGs is shown in the map :-

The pre- monsoon season in India technically is from Mar-May and as such our rainfall data chart for the month of March2013 is tabulated below :-

What is worth noting is that Kalimpong on 21Mar2013 received more rain in 90 mins (37mm - excluding hail stones) than the monthly average rainfall (see here for details).

Praful Rao,

Kalimpong