A woman collecting water from an oozing pit on the banks of a livestock tank at Matlam village of Kruthivennu mandal in Krishna district. |P Ravindra Babu/ EPS
NEW DELHI: There seems to be no respite from searing heat for a month and half more with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) saying that the drought condition prevailing in the country now will remain maximum for 30 to 45 days.
IMD director B P Yadav said farmers faced two deficient rainfall years consecutively and the immediate solution is good monsoon and the weather office has predicted good forecast and the south-west monsoon rainfall will be above normal in this year.
Ten states are reeling under drought and water storage in reservoirs is an all time low. The weather office has for the first time started giving heat wave forecast to inform people about the extreme weather conditions.
The five days heat wave forecast issued Saturday says that heat wave conditions very likely at a few place with severe heat wave at isolated places over Odisha. Heat wave conditions very likely at a few place over Jharkhand, Telangana and Rayalseema and isolated places over Bihar, West Bengal, Vidarbha, south coastal Andhra Pradesh and north and interior of Tamil Nadu.
The IMD earlier this month has forecast for above normal monsoon with country as a whole expected to receive good rainfall. The monsoon has been poor in last two years thus increasing prices of essential commodities like pulses and vegetables.
The government in the Supreme Court has said that 33 crore people about more than a quarter of the country's population are in the grip of drought leading to drinking water shortage and agricultural distress. About 2.55 lakh villages in 254 districts are drought-affected and measures have been taken like running water trains to ensure availability of water to people.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA) in US has said that 2016 was on course to beat 2015 as the hottest year on record globally.
