Vinson Kurian
Businessline
Thiruvananthapuram, Sept 9
Overall monsoon performance has improved to 102 per cent and counting as of Thursday, matching the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) estimate for the entire season made in its long-range forecast.Widespread rainfall has been reported from the West Coast, West Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha during the 24 hours ending on Thursday morning, the IMD said in an update the same evening.
DEFICIT IN EAST
It was fairly widespread over East Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarkhand, Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. The deficit in East and Northeast India has since come down by a notch to 20 per cent, a rain-spell away from getting into the “normal” category despite nagging deficits in individual Met subdivisions in the region.
Jharkhand (-48 per cent) and Gangetic West Bengal (-35 per cent) continued to lead the pack.
Only Arunachal Pradesh showed a single-digit deficit of four per cent, which, thanks to IMD definition, is in the “normal” category (between -19 per cent and 20 per cent).
CROP UPDATE
Meanwhile, the latest agro-met advisory issued by the IMD said that the overall kharif crop condition continues to be “almost normal” except in East and Northeast India. Receipt of well-distributed rainfall in most of the States is expected to lead to a good harvest during the season.
Farmers in the East and the Northeast who could not sow during the earlier part of kharif season or lost the sowed crop due to deficient rain have been advised to make most of the recent rain and undertake sowing according to recommended contingency measures.
Crops partially affected due to less rainfall during earlier part of the season in some districts of Uttar Pradesh have now recovered due to a recent round of wet weather witnessed during the last few weeks.
Alongside, there have also been reports of adverse impact to crop from heavy rainfall in different parts of the country, the advisory said.Heavy rainfall on two days on a trot and resultant water-logging has affected soybean, groundnut, ginger and turmeric crops in low-lying areas in Imphal-West and Imphal-East districts of Manipur.
Submergence of crops, mainly kharif vegetables, has been reported from some areas of Upper Brahmaputra Valley zone of Assam.Harvest-ready green gram crop in Gulbarga and Yadgir districts in Karnataka too has been affected in this manner. Alternating bright sunshine for the last 15 days has led to pod shattering, leading to severe loss of crop.
Reports of water logging have been reported from Hyderabad, Medak, Rangareddy and Nalgonda districts in Telangana. Farmers have been advised to drain out excess water from the fields.Chilli and tomato crops have been adversely affected by heavy rainfall in Nagaland. Fruit rot in chilli and bacterial blight in tomato may have adversely affected the yield of the respective crops, the advisory said.
The East and Northeast, which witnesses annual rainfall between 1,300 mm and 2,800 mm, is passing through its second year of drought or delayed monsoon.
In contrast, the desert States in the north and west with annual rainfall of between 600 and 900 mm have seen a deluge this year.Satellite cloud imagery on Thursday afternoon showed the presence of convective (rain-bearing) clouds over parts of Gujarat, Bihar, Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, the Northeastern States, West-central and South Bay of Bengal and East Arabian Sea.
A rain alert valid for the next two days said that heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur at a few places over Gujarat.
Isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall has been forecast over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim during this period.
In Central India, isolated heavy rainfall would occur over West Madhya Pradesh, North Madhya Maharashtra, Konkan, Goa and Coastal Karnataka on Friday.
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