Kerala Received 41% above normal rains, S Kerala got 150% in excess

Monsoon rains and widespread flooding that wrecked Kerala and claimed around 400 lives according to some reports have a telling fact behind them — the state has received 41 per cent more rains than normal for the period June 1 to August 22. For August alone till Wednesday, it was lashed with 150 per cent above normal rains, grinding southern Kerala to a halt and ruining its economy.

Thousands of people have been displaced in the floods and Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has pegged the state’s losses at over Rs 19,512 crore.

The government-run India Meteorological Department or IMD said rainfall over Kerala during monsoon season — June 1 to August 22 — has been exceptionally high. The state has so far received 2,392 mm rainfall against the normal of 1,701 mm, that is 41 per cent above the mark. Idukki district recorded 92 per cent above normal rains followed by Palakkad district at 72 per cent above normal.

The rainfall over Kerala during June, July and August — that is August 1 to August 22 — has been 15 per cent, 18 per cent and 150 per cent above normal, respectively. IMD in its second stage forecast on May 30 had region wise predicted 95 per cent of the long period average or LPA over South Peninsula with a model error of 8 per cent plus or minus for June through September season. IMD defines average, or normal, rainfall as between 96 per cent and 104 per cent of a 50-year average of 89 cm for the entire four-month season.

How did the IMD get it so wrong for Kerala?

“Kerala was lashed with 41 per cent excess rains than the normal for June 1 to August 22 period and for the August month alone it was 150 per cent above normal,” AK Srivastava, director at National Climate Centre at IMD told Financial Chronicle.

“The IMD forecast issued three months ago was not for Kerala alone but for South Peninsula, comprising Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Pondicherry, Karnataka, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. No weather model in the world can forecast accurately three months in advance for a small state like Kerala,” Srivastava said, adding that there were many

intricacies.

Secondly, the rain forecast is for the four-month season till September and thirdly, “if you consider a model error of 8 per cent plus or minus for the entire season, rains will be in the range of 87-103 per cent,” he pointed out.

He said rains had now reduced and there were 39 more days for the season to end. “Monsoon rains will be in the range of our forecast for the entire South Peninsula,” Srivastava said.

The IMD official said there were all-time record rains in 1907 when the state received 1,387 mm rains for August.
“Kerala received 175 per cent above normal rains in August 1907 while Idukki district received the

highest rainfall in 140 years at 1,419 mm in August,” he said.

According to IMD, due to very heavy rains over Kerala till end of July, its 35-odd reservoirs were close to full and had no buffer storage to

accommodate the heavy inflows from August 10. The continued exceptional heavy rainfall in August in the catchment areas had compelled the authorities to resort to heavy releases downstream into the rivers.

“Such a scenario that continued for almost a week now has caused overflowing of all river banks leading to widespread flooding almost all over the state,” the IMD pointed out.

“The floods in Kerala were a man-made disaster as a result of large-scale excavations and stone quarrying carried out in the state over a decade,” Madhav Gadgil, well-known ecologist, who founded the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore told Financial Chronicle.

He said a total of 1,650 excavations were undertaken for stone quarrying and mining, out of which only 150 were permitted.

Gadgil blamed the government for not taking cognizance of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel headed by him which submitted its report to the Kerala government in 2011.

The report had very specifically pointed out that if stone quarrying was not stopped, it might eventually lead to natural calamities like the one happening in the state today, he said.