The terrifying new normal in rainfall: It's either too little or too much

As far as rainfall goes, June 2019 for us in the Darjeeling Himalayas ended with a net deficiency of -56%:

Exact figures in for the region from IMD are:

The average rainfall figures for the region being:

So while the rural community in Kalimpong district felt very anxious at the continued deficiency of rain (Apr and May2019 were also bone dry months), urban dwellers were also facing a severe water shortage and extraordinary heat in the pre-monsoon season.
Then came July and in 10 days (06-15Jul2019) we received 98% of our monthly rain in Kalimpong and Darjeeling with Kurseong, Siliguri going well over the monthly rainfall during the same period:

In Aug2019 thus far, in just 5 days Kalimpong has received 51.1% of the monthly rain for August.
This trend is being seen in the entire country be it Vadodra or Mumbai and the consequences of these events have been covered in this blog and also by the media
I wonder whether we realize what we are facing and are prepared to face the new normal in precipitation which is always either too little rain or too much.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

A mention from an Icon in his memoirs : Prof Leszek Starkel On SaveTheHills

In the world of Geo-morphology, Prof Leszek Starkel of the Polish Academy of Sciences stands tall.
A virtual giant of a man and a pioneer in the studies of landslides in the Darjeeling Himalaya, he first came to Darjeeling after the Oct 1968 disaster and continued to turn up almost every year thereafter to trudge these mountains and write volumes.
I came across him quite by accident. A friend had loaned me Prof Starkel's book on landslides some time in early 2008 and while flipping thru the pages I found his email address on the last page of the book. I shot off an email to him and promptly forgot about it, never expecting a reply from someone as famous or as busy.
Almost 6 months later I received a reply from him saying he would be in this area in the autumn of 2008 and would be happy to meet me. What followed was almost history for STH - we quickly organized the first Seminar on Landslide Hazards at Darjeeling with Prof Starkel as our keynote speaker.
I found his 'Memoirs' recently while researching the 1968 disaster and have published the excerpts below:

The images of the 21Nov2008 Seminar are here

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

A document from the past: my (restored) photo of the Oct1968 disaster in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

The Story behind the above Photo:
I still have vivid and frightening memories of the Oct 1968 Disaster which engulfed the entire Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalayas more than 50yrs ago.
I was 17 then, a student of St Joseph's College, Darjeeling who had come home to Kalimpong during the Puja vacations in the first week of October.
Then all of a sudden it started raining...
Strange that it was raining so heavily when we normally expected fine weather with an occasional shower. Stranger still, that the torrential downpours continued thru the day and night and yet another day and another night ... and for 4 days.
I don't recollect much lightning or thunder so I presume now it wasn't any cyclone or depression which had moved up from the Bay (of Bengal). I just remember the steady and heavy drumming of incessant rain. I also don't recall any panic or concern either among the local people or in government circles.
Meanwhile it just rained and rained and rained.
On the fourth night, I distinctly remember going to bed and hearing muffled explosions at night - landslides were taking place somewhere and reasonably close by...
On the fifth day morning, it stopped raining and suddenly we saw patches of blue skies.. and in the silence with no heavy rain, all I heard was sounds of water - water gushing out of crevices, trickling down some hidden corner, streets which had turned into rivers, water pounding down jhoras (natural drains), and the roar of the Teesta river way below my home in Tirpai, Kalimpong.
And there was also death.
It was everywhere - I saw the carcass of cows which had been buried in a landslide below our home, and near Nandu Ram's Wool Godown (now the CST - Central School for TIbetans) barely 5 mins walk from my home, some 15 people died in a huge landslide (refer the 'explosions'). Further down, in Dungra bustee, a jhora had burst its banks and swept away an entire clan of 7 of our relatives.
My little hamlet, Tirpai was marooned, cut off from the town of Kalimpong which was barely a kilometer away, and Kalimpong itself was marooned from Siliguri with the highway being decimated by landslides.
So we heard new sounds - sounds of helicopters as they dropped supplies and food, up at the army cantonment in Durpin.
I heard that the iconic Anderson bridge at Teesta bazar had been been swept away and that was when I and 2 friends walked down 16kms to photograph the destruction and havoc caused in the mother of all disasters in the Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalaya.
Realizing that most readers of this blog would not have even been born when the Oct 1968 disaster occurred and therefore would not understand the significance of the photo on top, I am attaching an image of the majestic Anderson Bridge which was washed away during the event. It was constructed in 1933 and named after John Anderson, Governor of Bengal.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

STH activities : Save Green/ Stay Clean, a Govt of W Bengal program on the Environment in Kalimpong (01Aug2019)

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

Rainfall data of Jun2019 for the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

 Rainfall data of Gangtok, Damthang and Dentam are from IMD

North Sikkim : The deluge of 17Jun2019

Also read here

ABOUT JUNE 2019 RAINFALL FROM IMD

'June ended with a huge deficit of 33% (for the whole country) but within a span of 10days  from 01Jul to12Jul it came down to 14%'.

- KJ Ramesh,
Director General,
IMD.


Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling -Sikkim Himalaya

Orange orchards of Darjeeling & Kalimpong - from the Best Growing Zones into Graveyards.

On 22Nov2015, I made a trip to Sittong in Kurseong subdivison (Darjeeling dist) to check out some landslides in that area. It was a day long trip and I visited some prominent landslides while enroute to the little hamlet and spent much of my day investigating the huge landslide in Sittong 3.
I also talked with some locals about the landslide situation there but while talking about their livelihoods they said oranges which were their main source of livelihood in Sittong were almost gone.
Of course, everyone here knows that oranges from Sittong once flooded the markets in Kalimpong and those along National Highway10 at Lohapul.
What the people I talked to feared most, was that along with oranges, their livelihoods for generations would also disappear.
They were correct.
Oranges as a cash crop in the Darjeeling-Kalimpong region is history today.
This news was brought out in the Telegraph on 25Nov2015 (see below) and I know that it was shown to a very high level official from the Govt of W Bengal who was visiting Kalimpong that day.

Therefore, I was surprised to read yesterday, another article by Vivek on 'Orange crisis in the hills' (below).

So 4 years later, while politicians still bicker and blame each other, the Darjeeling hills - once one of the 'best orange growing zones' in the country, is today a graveyard for orange orchards with the livelihoods of thousands destroyed and it is certainly NOT due to aging trees and orchards alone.
I visited some orchards in Bhalukhop bustee (village), Kalimpong some years ago and talked to a farmer who's crop was similarly blighted - he showed me the reason for the orange trees dying en masse (see below) despite being new plantations:

WIth many of our cash crops, ginger, oranges, now large cardamom succumbing to disease and pests, and the looming water crisis in the mountains where our natural springs are drying up, one wonders about food security in the Darjeeling -Sikkim Himalaya and future of agriculture as viable livelihood option for the rural youth of the region.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling -Sikkim Himalaya

Extreme event in the Darjeeling Himalayas as it unfurls :14Jul2019

We, in the Darjeeling Himalayas have over the past 9 days been witnessing an extraordinary weather event.
a. A low pressure area between the states of UP and Bihar resulted in a sudden spurt in monsoon activity in the region with rainfall suddenly jumping from - 56% in the beginning of Jul2019

to where we received more than our monthly average of rain for July (average 615.8mm) in the spate of just 10 days.

b. This extreme weather event is still ongoing (see below)

and IMetD has clamped on a RED weather warning for this region for an unprecedented number of days in a row.
In keeping with the enhanced rain, we have had a quantum increase in landslide activity in the Darjeeling Himalayas:
  -    We have had 2 fatalities due to landslides directly and another 4 when a vehicle carrying tourists plunged into the Teesta river on National Highway (NH)10. NH31A also had landslides in July2019.
  -   NH10, an arterial road connecting Sikkim to the rest of the country has been blocked for the past 2 days and so have virtually all the roads out of Kalimpong towards Sikkim and the Dooars plains. NH55 which links Darjeeling to Siliguri is cut off at places and the services of the DHR have been suspended.
 -   There have been a spate of landslides all over the districts of Kalimpong and Darjeeling. We will be giving more details on the landslides in this blog.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

09July2019: Landslide report from Darjeeling.

Landslide in front of Anugayalaya/Divyavani, near Loreto Convent, Darjeeling

 At around 4:30 am on Tuesday Morning i.e., 9^th July, a landslide occurred in front of Anugayalaya/Divyavani near Loreto Convent (to be precise below Bishop’s House, NH10).The debris covered the entire road in front of the building which caused the drain water to enter inside the building (fig. 1.0).

The landslide took place at the adjoining road (i.e., a road to Anugayalaya’s Office) on NH10 (Lebong Hill Cart Road).There were few signs of crack visible on the road in fig 1.2. The slide is measured to be around 13 metres in height and 6 metres in width. However, to consider the width of the whole areas, is 30 metres (which is also the length of Pony road). The rainfall data as measured by IMD over the past 24 hours is 112 mm.

The staffs(Church and Anugayalaya) witnessed the incident in the morning. Around 4 am in the morning, they noticed drain water streaming down the slope and slowly leading to landslide. The slide blocked the road in front of Anugayalaya’s office, which is also a road leading to Loreto Convent.

The local residents and the staffs cleared and made a walkable passage for the school children to walk down to their school. They covered the landslide (fig 1.7). Till 9 am, no local authorities neither the relief materials were available.

The reason behind this incident was drain blockage. The drain system was completely blocked as shown in fig. 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6. So, the drain water along with road/rain water started flowing/pouring down the slope causing landslide.

The authorities started to visit the site after 9:30 am. The Irrigation department came to take measurements then followed by the traffic officials. Assistant Engineer Mr Anup Das, Central Planning, GTA visited the site as well.

The Darjeeling municipality engineer department, Mr Prashant Rai (Head of the engineer department) visited the site. He informed his department workers to come and start cleaning up the debris. The workers started cleaning the road as seen in fig 1.8, 1.9 and 2.0. The clearance took till 1:30 pm in the afternoon. 

Amit Gurung
SaveTheHills
Darjeeling

Preliminary report on Fatal Landslide at Sukhia Pokhrim Darjeeling (08Jul2019)

At around 1:30 am on Monday night (08Jul2019), a landslide occurred at Chatai Dhura (Forest Village) below Pubung Fatak, near Sukhia, Darjeeling. The house of Lopchan family was buried under the landslide.

Two people, Kumar Lopchan (60 years) and his wife Bal Kumari Lopchan (55 years), died. They were buried under the debris. After being extricated by the Police and Fire brigade and they were rushed out to Sadar Hospital, Darjeeling where the doctor declared them dead.

The landside and mud flow/slide occurred from State Highway 12 which connecting Sukhia to Simana. The landslide is more than 100 metres and 30-40 metres wide. As per IMD, the rainfall of Darjeeling is 172 mm in the past 24 hours (07Jul2019).

The probable cause behind this incident is as per BDMO Sukhia block, could be due to state highway extension. While its construction the mud or soil was left opened at the side. The drainage wasn’t clear out for the monsoon water flow. As to look into, the village was built on steep slope.

The problem the people faced was due to being under no network coverage area. So, the information to the Gram Panchayat Staff was late. The BDMO received the information around 6 am in the morning.

Amit Gurung,
STH
Darjeeling