Rainfall data Aug2010

The rainfall data of Aug2010 is placed above.
Kurseong again leads with excessive rainfall, whereas there has been more or less normal rainfall in Kalimpong and Darjeeling.
For Kalimpong and Kurseong one third of the month was almost dry with less than 5mm of rain.
Darjeeling district has remained largely unscathed by landslides this month with no death reported; things were not as rosy in neighbouring Sikkim which had more than its share of landslides especially along the highways.

 

Praful Rao

36hrs of hell (06-08Oct2009)

Rainfall data for Darjeeling and Kalimpong for approx 36 hrs(06-08Oct2009)

Darjeeling - 288mm
Kalimpong - 280mm


Average rainfall (last 5 yrs) for Darjeeling district for the month of Oct  : 132mm (source http://imd.gov.in/section/hydro/distrainfall/webrain/wb/darjeeling.txt)

It rained for just about 36hrs and unlike Cyclone AILA, there was no well formed system which was "trackable", nevertheless it dumped close to 300mm of rain (equal to more than double the monthly rainfall) in barely one and half days.
For all of us living here in the affected areas , the 36hrs were as many hrs in hell!
Slide 'A' shows the satellite picture from http://imd.gov.in on 07Oct09 at 3.30am IST
Slide 'B' shows a close up of the same area on 08Oct09 at 5.30am IST

The fact that there were no major landslides this time is perhaps because
a) In Sept09 we had almost 2 weeks of sunshine and as such the moisture content in the soil had reduced considerably.
b) The rainfall lasted for 36hrs only.

Comment by Praful Rao
Annotations on Slide 'A' and 'B' are mine.
Rainfall data source :-
a) Darjeeling ................... Compuset, Darjeeling
b) Kalimpong................... Govt of WB