Guwahati, Oct. 9: Heavy showers have lashed parts of the Northeast in the last couple of days, but the official monsoon season that ended on September 30 left the region, known as a high-rainfall zone, far short of its normal quota.

The director of the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) at Borjhar, D.K. Handique, said all the seven northeastern states had received below normal rainfall this monsoon with Nagaland and Meghalaya topping the list.

Officials of the meteorological department said Nagaland had received 49 per cent less than normal rainfall followed by Meghalaya, which received 44 per cent less than normal rainfall during the four-month monsoon season from June 1 to September 30.

“This monsoon, Nagaland received only 681.8mm rain against a normal of 1,344.1mm, which is a minus 49 per cent departure. The condition was not much better in Meghalaya as the state received rainfall measuring 3148mm against a normal of 5585.7mm, a minus 44 per cent departure,” Handique said.

“Rainfall over Arunachal Pradesh was 32 per cent below normal, Manipur 27 per cent, Mizoram 19 per cent, Assam 18 per cent and Tripura 9 per cent,” he added.

“Normal” rainfall is the average of the annual monsoon rainfall received by the respective states in the past 30 years, the RMC director explained.

The decline in rainfall has had an adverse effect on agriculture in the region.

The changing monsoon pattern was felt more in Meghalaya, which boasts of being the wettest place on earth. Long spells of rain during monsoon is gradually becoming a thing of the past in the state, which used to receive bountiful showers not very long ago.

Handique said the below normal rainfall was one of the factors responsible for the rise in temperature.

The maximum temperature in Guwahati was 2 to 6 degrees Celsius above normal in June, 2 to 5 degrees Celsius above normal in July and 3 to 6 degrees Celsius above normal in September. In August, the maximum temperature remained more or less normal.

“Between September 28 and October 3, the city experienced unprecedented rise in maximum temperature, which was 6 and 7 degrees Celsius above normal. Such rise in temperature in September and October is rare,” the RMC director said.

“On September 28, we recorded a maximum temperature of 37.8 degrees Celsius in Guwahati. This was the highest maximum temperature recorded in September in the past 59 years,” he added.