Erratic, Unpredictable Weather: The New Normal For India Now?

This year, a large proportion of Indians living in the central, western and south western parts of the country heaved a sigh of relief when it began raining, even though sporadically, in the middle of May. Before that, March and April had been quite pleasant and that had led most to believe that summer in 2023 is going to be a mild one. This was further buttressed by the fact that it rained during ‘nautapa’, those dreaded nine hot days that are notorious for being terribly hot and well nigh unbearable; when all you can do to ‘bear’ it was to hunker down at home from mid-morning to late evening, hoping against hope that those awful nine days get over as soon as possible.

That is why, no one was prepared for the onslaught of heat in Central India after ‘nautapa’. Temperatures routinely crossed 40 degrees Celsius and people avoided stepping out of their homes except for emergencies.

For those living in coastal areas, the cyclone ‘Biparjoy’, which ominously means ‘disaster’, came just as most had thought the worst of the weather was over. It made landfall yesterday, June 15, on the Gujarat coast. Its effect was felt not just in the immediate vicinity — the Arabian Seafront but also far inland and in mid-June, it became as humid as the middle of August.

All this is pointing towards one undeniable fact — that ‘erratic’, ‘extreme’, ‘unpredictable’ weather is now becoming more and more common. Some of would it is ‘here to stay’. Others might also say that it is yet another manifestation of global warming and climate change. That we are now going to see more of this kind of extreme, unusual, unpredictable weather.

It is the kind of weather no one can be completely prepared for. The winter sets in too late, much after Diwali, which is its usual set-in date. It is cold much less — in a large part of our country, across geographies.

In the upper reaches of the Himalayas, it does not snow as often and as heavily as it’s needed to ensure a robust supply of melt water from glaciers in the summer. If it does snow or rain, instead, it creates conditions ripe for avalanches, landslides, mudslides and such like. Because it is not as cold as usual in the plains, the crop cycle gets disturbed and that has a knock-on effect on sowing, reaping and leaving the land fallow across the massive flat plains of the Ganga-Jamuna doab region. Further south, the effect of this unsettled weather is felt in the plains of Bundelkhand, Baghelkhand and Marathwada.

It is already 35 degrees in mid-March and the months of March and April and seem to be as hot as peak summer (May and June). By this time, the patience of most people, individually and the majority of Indians, collectively, is running thin and everyone prays that the ‘nautapa’ passes as soon as humanly possible. So, when it does not sting as much as usual, a collective sigh of relief goes up. However, this may have been too early, since the terrible heat that defines ‘nautapa’ just gets pushed a few days further, instead of not stinging at all, as most had hoped.

The best way to ‘suffer through’ the dreadful heat of the Indian plains is to prepare for the worst and grin and bear it. Like mentioned above earlier, this is going to be the ‘new normal’ and the sooner one reconciles to that, the better it will be, both collectively as a geographical entity — the Indian sub-continent — and individually, as a people who are accustomed to heat and hot summers but not to this kind of scorching heat that lingers on and refuses to make way for the antidote — the much-awaited and heavily-welcomed monsoon.