Chennai weather gets wet boost from climate change

The city had to take close to 50 cms of rain in less than 36 hours on December 1 and 2 last year. It was blamed on a freak storm, said to be the mother of all storms to have hit this part of the coast in a long time.

Such extreme weather events like intensive bursts of rain are also attributed to climate change. So it is not an unalloyed blessing, nothing is. The lesson to be learnt is the world is changing and man has to adapt to change isf he is unable to challenge the change itself and reverse it. It is a long fight against climate change and India has just formally joined it on Sunday.

While we dig in for the big fight for the sake of our planet, at least Chennaiites can say we don’t mind a wetter city provided the infra works to take the water away.  

Mercifully, on the September night of the big rain, the drains worked on Anna Salai and other main roads and navigating the wet roads at night was not a nightmare. The question is whether Namma Chennai will come through as well from the major monsoon months of October and November (and the first half of December) in which the city gets 40 to 50 per cent of its annual rainfall. Look at the state of the drains, clogged with refuse on every street, and you know the disaster of flooding is only a couple of successive days of heavy rain away.

Meanwhile, the weather apps are having a field day telling us all about the wind, humidity, dew point, pressure and UV index. But not too many weather pundits foresaw the amount of rain that would come from the predictable period of thunderstorms. The intensity of rain in any one area is not easy to predict unless real time radar images are available. Even there, the forecast would be effective only for the next hour or so. Anyway, the southwest monsoon, at its most intense in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, contributed amply to Chennai’s water requirements until the Northeast sets in.

The onus is now on the Northeast to add to the largesse of its Southwest counterpart for Chennai as the moist winds hit the Himalayas and come back south. Before we begin getting all these forecasting signals from weather pundits about normal monsoons, let us reflect on what an inexact science this business of forecasting is, despite all the modern refinements.

Maybe, the NE would shed some water on the Cauvery catchment too so that our friends across the border are not so worked up over worrying about running out of drinking water that they start thinking of importing the stuff from the original Silicon Valley.

Siri and her American training are also leading to a bit of fun as the AI app converses with iPad users. Ask her about the weather and she says the outlook is not so good in her rich accent. While a daytime high of 32 Celsius is like winter for a Chennaiite, Siri disagrees, saying “Not such a good day I am afraid.” Hot, cold, wet and dry weather are, perhaps, all in the mind, which is why climate is such a relative phenomenon.

One man’s snow is another man’s ski slope. The guy in the desert will be jumping with joy if it rains whereas Siri is anxious about her friends getting wet if they are setting out so much as to play a round of golf in suburban America. There were days in parched Chennai when a famous violinist would stand on a dry riverbed and play away like a man possessed hoping to wake up Lord Varuna or Pluvius.

A government of the day once invested money in seeding clouds from a light airplane hoping to coax the cumulus nimbus or its cousins to drop some water over our City by the Bay.

It is when Nature is willing to bestow our favours on us and we show unwillingness or incapacity to benefit from it that makes the blood boil.
Which will it be during the Northeast is the questions.