Is the frequency of cloudbursts increasing? Unfortunately, there are no doppler radars installed in Himalayan states such as Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. But through the use of doppler radars, it is possible to forecast the possibility of cloudbursts about six hours in advance, sometimes even 12-14 hours in advance. Forecasts for a very small area are difficult to predict. They are difficult to forecast but not impossible the difficulty arises out of the fact that they take place over a very small area. Chamoli : People look on a damaged road affected by cloudbursts in Chamoli and Pithoragarh districts of Uttarakhand on Sunday. A typical cloudburst event is restricted to just a few hours, many times less than an hour, and is limited to a much smaller area. In each of the other instances, rainfall lasted for a few days and was spread over at least a large city. The Uttarakhand disaster of 2013, for example, had several cloudburst events, two of them big ones. There could have been individual or multiple cloudburst events in each of these instances. In addition, as pointed out earlier, cloudbursts get counted only when they result in largescale destruction of life and property, which happens mainly in mountainous regions. Hilly terrains aid in heated air currents rising vertically upwards, thereby, increasing the probability of a cloudburst situation. After a point, the raindrops become too heavy for the cloud to hold on to, and they drop down together in a quick flash. New drops are formed and existing raindrops gain in size. Raindrops, instead of dropping down, are carried upwards by the air current. Cloudbursts happen when saturated clouds are unable to produce rain because of the upward movement of very warm current of air. Why do cloudbursts happen only in the mountains and hilly areas?Ĭloudbursts do happen in plains as well, but there is a greater probability of them occurring in mountainous zones it has to do with the terrain. Watch Video: Uttarakhand Cloudburst: Visuals Of The Rescue Operations In Bastari village Generally, every time short-duration heavy rainfall leads to damage to life and property, it gets described as a cloudburst. It is for this reason that the term ‘cloudburst’ is very often used loosely for any sudden heavy downpour in fact, most of the time, the Met department is never in a position to state if a particular rainfall event, particularly in remote areas, qualifies to be called a cloudburst. The rainfall has to occur where the instrument is located for it to get recorded. But more importantly, cloudbursts are very localised events it is possible that they may not get recorded even by a good network of ground stations. Rainfall is measured by the ground stations that are sparse in the Himalayan areas.
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