Monsoon displaces over 25,000 people in India’s Gujarat

According to india.com, more than 25,000 people have been moved to higher ground and at least three are reported to have died in this latest period of floods in Gujarat.

Scroll.in website shows water depths are typically a half to one metre in Banaskantha district, with many rural areas cut off as road, rail and power are all affected.

The Times of India reports that the latest wave of floods in Assam has affected 90,000 people: 160 square km of land is underwater. This is a normal wet season in northeast India which contains the wettest place on earth.

In West Bengal, Rajasthan and Gujarat, this recent amount of rain is abnormal.

Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, has notched up just over a metre of rain in July. The average is 411mm. In the past 24 hours, the wettest place in the area has been Jamshedpur with a huge catch of 347mm

That has been surpassed by a town in Gujarat – Deesa – which collected 377mm in the same period. The state capital, Ahmedabad, has dealt with 506mm of rain in the past four days alone. The average monsoon rainfall for July is 291mm.

After a hesitant start and erratic advance, the Indian monsoon season is now full-blown. Disappointingly for southern India, the rains have been deficient. Kerala in particular has fared badly, recording a 24 percent deficit thus far.

In recent days, a significant increase in rain has happened further north, particularly in Gangetic West Bengal and in the west, Gujarat and Rajasthan. There are two deep circulating areas of low pressure along this line of latitude: one over south Rajasthan and one over West Bengal.

Areas of low pressure are areas where the air rises rapidly, clouds form and rain falls. Obviously during the wet season that means torrential rain.

Further heavy rain is likely in northern Gujarat and southern Rajasthan over the next few days. Model forecasts suggest that another 1,000mm is possible.