On December 1-2, 2015 flood-ravaged Chennai received more rainfall in 24
hours than it had seen on any day since 1901, according to NASA
The space agency Tuesday Dec 08,2015 released an animated map
that provides satellite-based estimates of rainfall over southeastern
India on December 1-2, accumulating in 30-minute intervals.
The deluge followed a month of persistent monsoon rains that were
already well above normal for Tamil Nadu, NASA’s Earth Observatory said
in a blog post.
At least 250 people have died, several hundred have been critically
injured, and thousands affected or displaced by the flooding that has
ensued.
NASA said the rainfall data come from the Integrated Multi-Satellite
Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), a product of the Global Precipitation
Measurement mission.
According to Hal Pierce, a scientist on the GPM team at NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Centre, the highest rainfall totals exceeded 500 mm (20
inches) in an area just off the southeastern coast.
“Meteorologists in India and abroad attributed the rains to a
super-charged northeast monsoon. In the winter, prevailing winds blow
from northeast to southwest across the country, which tends to have a
drying effect in most places, particularly inland,” the blog post said.
“But those northeasterly winds also blow over the warm waters of the Bay
of Bengal, where they evaporate a great deal of moisture from the sea
and dump it over southern and eastern India. Coastal eastern India
receives 50 to 60 per cent of its yearly rainfall during this winter
monsoon,” it said.
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