Rainbow lights up the central business district after a rainfall in the evening, in Bengaluru on June 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: K. MURALI KUMAR
The South West Monsoon which made a timely entry to Karnataka this year, has furthered progressed so as to cover entire Karnataka in a major reprieve to the farmers.
Ravaged by unprecedented drought and intense heat wave during summer, the farmers were on the brink, with crop loss and future looking grim. However, the weather conditions turned out to be favourable for the advent of the monsoon and has covered the entire State as on June 6, according to Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre.
The rainfall distribution has been described as ‘’fairly widespread’’ as more than 72% of the rain gauge stations at gram panchayats have recorded rainfall in excess of 2.5 mm during the 24 hour period ending 8.30 a.m. on Friday.
As per KSNDMC records, the cumulative rainfall across the State from June 1 till June 7 was 45 mm as against the normal rainfall of 35 mm for the assessed period. The rainfall has been widespread, and south interior Karnataka received 62 mm against a normal of 23 mm while north interior Karnataka has received 60 mm of rainfall against the normal of 24 mm for the same period.
It is only the coastal and malnad belt where the rainfall is below average but these are early days of monsoon. While the coastal belt has received 45 mm of rains against a normal of 105 mm during the first week of June, the Malnad region have receive 32 mm of rainfall against a normal of 48 mm, according to KSNDMC.
However, rains during the pre-monsoon — which is from March 1st to May 31st — in all the regions of the State have been above normal. Thus the deficiency in the Coastal and Malnad region incurred during the first week of June will not be significant.
The cumulative rainfall from June 1 to 7 is under the large excess category in 23 of the 31 districts; excess in one district, normal in 1 district, deficit in 5 districts and large deficit in 1 district.
Large swathes of north and central Karnataka which were affected by severe heat wave conditions have reported Large Excess rains. ‘’Large excess’’ is categorized by rainfall which is 60% above normal.
Coastal belt including Udupi, Uttara Kannada, Dakshina Kannada, Chikkamagalur and Kodagu are under deficit category and is categorized by rainfall which is 20% to 59% below normal. But as the monsoon has just set in, the shortfall is bound to be bridged and neutralised in the days ahead.