Monsoon plays truant,temperature soars again

A short spell of respite at the fag-end of June and the monsoon plays truant once again. The city,which was reeling under nearly 12 -hour power cuts and scorching heat,had heaved a sigh of relief as skies opened up on the last two days of June. But the relief was too short lived. With the rains no where in sight,the power cuts have resumed as the temperature slowly inches towards the 40 degrees Celsius mark.

Dr K K Gill agrometrologist at the Punjab Agricultural University though gives some hope. “The rains should come back by seventh or eighth of this month. The monsoon that had previously crossed Maharashtra and was spreading over the northern India has once again revived in Mumbai which has been getting heavy downpour. The met department had predicted some rain on Saturday and Sunday but there have been none. So let us hope that the monsoon is back in Punjab by the end of the coming week.”

Talking about the pattern of rainfall that Punjab expected in the coming two months,Dr Gill added,”Though June was bad in terms of hot wave yet it covered up for rainfall. While the average rainfall for June is 66mm,this time we received rains in the last two days but it crossed 110mm mark. The rainfall,however,was of little use to farmers for it was not well spread.”

He said,”In July,we should get 232 mm rainfall. For this,the rains should come now so that we could get a good spread of monsoon in the month. We expect 85% rainfall in August. The quantity of rain does matter much but what does matter is that the rains should be well-spread throughout the month. The manner in which the rains came in June is of a little help as farmers struggled for the entire month only to get a short respite for two days.”