Heavy rain alert : third week of Aug2014

Transcript (excerpt) of BBC weather bulletin of Monday, 18 Aug2014(23:57 UTC)
“The main focus of storms – north east India, northern parts of Bangladesh and eastern parts of Nepal.... The rainfall suppressed a little bit on Wed and Thursday but there are signs that we could see it (the rainfall) intensifying further and through the coming days, taking us into the week we could see as much as 90cm of fresh rain around this sort of region which will of course cause widespread flooding....”

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Excerpt from IMetD All India Weather Bulletin (19Aug2014-midday)
Meteorological Analysis (based on 0830 hours IST)
· The axis of monsoon trough at mean sea level runs close to the foothills of Himalayas.
· The upper air cyclonic circulation over northern parts of West Bengal and Sikkim
and neighbourhood has become less marked. However, a trough extends from Sub­Himalayan West Bengal; Sikkim to south Chhattisgarh across Bihar extends upto 1.5 km above mean sea level.

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Weather Warning during next 3 days (IMetD)
19 August (Day 1): Heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur at isolated places over South Interior
Karnatak
Heavy rainfall would occur at isolated places over Assam; Meghalaya,
Arunachal Pradesh, Tamilnadu; Puducherry and Lakshadweep.
20 August (Day 2):
 Heavy rainfall would occur at isolated places over Sub Himalayan West Bengal; Sikkim, Assam;  Meghalaya,   Arunachal   Pradesh,  Tamilnadu;  Puducherry,  North  Interior  Karnataka,   South  Interior Karnataka and Lakshadweep.
21 August (Day 3):   Heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur at isolated places over Sub­ Himalayan West Bengal; Sikkim.
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Slide 1 shows past 7days of rainfall in India from TRMM.

Slide 2 shows potential landslide sites also from TRMM.

For anyone interested, the normal rainfall for the whole of July in Sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim is around 61cm. If the forecast is correct, this region could receive one and half times that rain (ie 90cm) in the next couple of days. 

This should be a cause for concern to all of us in the region and the intent of this post is to make people aware and prepared - without causing panic.

Praful Rao,

Kalimpong,

Dist Darjeeling

STH stormwatch (21May2014) : TRMM Sees Stormy Bay Of Bengal + Updates

The TRMM website is one of the many that STH uses while keeping a track of the storms that brew up in the Bay of Bengal.
Placed below is an image juxtaposing the latest image of the storm taken from IMD with that on the TRMM website.

* Update at 0830h IST, 21May2014
The low pressure area over eastcentral Bay of Bengal & neighbourhood concentrated into depression at 0830 hours IST of today, the 21st May 2014 near latitude 15.5°N and longitude 90.5°E over eastcentral Bay of Bengal, about 490 km north­northwest of Port Blair.
It may intensify further into a deep depression during next 24 hours. It would move near northwards for some time andthen north­northeastwards towards Myanmar & adjoining Bangladesh coast during next 48 h

For anyone interested in details see here

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong,
Dist Darjeeling

Text book example : How Politics and Politicians impact Management of Disasters.

As I write there is a deep depression brewing up in the Bay of Bengal and in order to ascertain rainfall data associated with the depression (which is likely to be upgraded to a tropical cyclone today), I checked the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) website.
I found the main TRMM website (http://trmm.jpl.nasa.gov/) unavailable and the TRMM website which was available (see above) had a cautionary note on it which said the "data may not be upto date" due to the US Govt shutdown. In fact, the website had information which was 9 days old and its latest images were of Typhoon USAGI of 30Sep2013.
So vital information on Typhoon FITOW (08Oct2013) was missing on the TRMM site as was information on the depression in the Bay of Bengal, slowly working its way up from the Andaman islands to mainland India  - thanks to politics and politicians!
In this context, the Darjeeling hills has been embroiled in  grim political turmoil for several years now and management of the very serious landslide problem of this region has been confined to a tiny, dark corner in the minds of politicians involved.


Praful Rao
Kalimpong,
District Darjeeling