Winter rainfall may extend till April, posing problems to farmers

NEW DELHI: India has received deficit rainfall for nine consecutive months, the driest phase since 2009, but now as harvesting approaches, winter rainfall may extend up to April, which is again bad news for farmers.

“Models are showing March-April rains to be above normal. It is going to be wetter,” said Laxman Singh Rathore, director general, India Meteorological Department.

He said it was early to say anything about the quantity and spread of the rains and whether to attribute it entirely to El Nino phenomenon.

Rathore said other factors from southeasterly winds bringing moisture from the Bay of Bengal where anti cyclones would form and the convection in atmosphere where land warms up thereby heating the air leading to rains could spell rains as late as April.

Some meteorologists at the weather office said the spread of winter rains usually happened in an El Nino year. “It is usually observed that in El Nino year such as 2015 or 2009, the winter season extended till April. It might happen this year too,” said a meteorologist, who did not wish to be named.

Indu Sharma, a former director at the Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research in Karnal said that mild rains with low temperatures till the end of March did not pose a problem to the crop, but heavy rains will hit the standing ripe crop.

“Rains in March-April will be a huge blow to farmers. Last year, too, we lost a lot of crop due to waterlogging in fields,” said Sharma.

He said since January this year the weather has remained congenial for the wheat crop. The weather office has forecast gradual rise in day and night temperatures over central and west India by 2-3°C in the next two days.

In the next 24 hours, the weather office has forecast heavy snowfall at a few places over Jammu & Kashmir and by February 11 over Himachal Pradesh as well. From February 14, it has forecast rain at a few places over northeast, east and south India.

Between June and September 2015, the southwest monsoon rain deficit was 14%. This was followed by a 23% deficit of the northeast monsoon from October to December. From January 1 to February 3 of this year the deficit was 63%. “Even as the country received deficit rain in October-December, south India got good rains,” said DS Pai, head of the long range forecast at the India Meteorological Department.