Six of the eight Northeast states witnessed deficient monsoon rains due to lack of rain-bearing clouds and monsoon troughs from the Bay of Bengal.
Barring Sikkim and Tripura, the six remaining Northeast states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram — experienced deficit rains during the four-month-long (June to September) southwest monsoon.
IMD (Tripura) Director Dilip Saha said that due to lack of rain-bearing clouds, water vapour and monsoon troughs from the Bay of Bengal, several northeastern states experienced deficient rainfall.
“However, there are at least 15 days left for the withdrawal of the southwest monsoon from the northeastern states. By the remaining two weeks, the deficiency of the rain might get covered before the formal withdrawal of the monsoon. The withdrawal of monsoon starts from the western region of the country and then from the northeastern region,” Saha said.
According to the IMD, during the four-month monsoon period, Manipur witnessed the highest rainfall deficiency of 60 per cent, categorized as “large deficiency”, followed by Nagaland (26 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (25 per cent), Assam and Mizoram (both 22 per cent), Meghalaya (21 per cent) and Tripura (15 per cent).
Sikkim, like previous years, experienced excess rainfall of 12 per cent during the monsoon period.
As per the IMD norms, up to 19 per cent deficient or excess rainfall is categorized as normal.
The northeastern region normally witnesses normal or heavy rainfall during the four months of the southwest monsoon, and few states, especially, Assam gets badly affected by the recurring annual floods.