Sunday, August 2, 2020

Rainfall data of some towns in the Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalaya - July2020





In July, rainfall in our region during the SW Monsoon (Jun-Sep) peaks - and peak it did this year. Except for W Sikkim, Darjeeling and Sikkim had excess rain in July2020, caused by a rather frequent movement of the monsoon trough towards the foothills of the Himalayas.
July ended up being a very 'WARNED' month, with RED WARNINGS for heavy rain being issued thru much of the month

Numerous landslides were reported in our WHATS APP group (HAZARD ALERTS) and some have been documented in this blog (here 1 and 2 ) - we are still in the process of collecting data on many more of the landslides which have taken place.
The REALLY heavy rainfall however, took place along the foothills of the Dooars and Bhutan and the plains of North Bengal
Some heavy rainfall data from the foothills and plains:
305.6mm - Alipur Duar (02Jul), 116.8mm - Siliguri (03Jul), 213.4mm - Samsing (10Jul),
245mm - Jholung (10Jul), 165.1mm- Rongo (11Jul), 237.7mm- Siliguri (12Jul),
463.4mm - Gazoledoba (12Jul), 345.4mm- Alipur Duar (12Jul), 230mm -Bagrakot (28Jul)
A milestone event in all this gloom, was the activation of 3 DAVIS AWS stations at Kalimpong, Gangtok and Darjeeling where weather and rainfall data is available in real - time from the stations
A fourth AWS is now at Kurseong and should be active soon



My thanks to Ms Shreya Gurung for maintaining the rainfall records.

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

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