The bay has been churning up a depression this year at the rate of one per week since July.Every one of them has caused heavy to very heavy rain along its path.Rainfalls in the range of 250mm has occurred.Ratnagiri had an extremely heavy pre monsoon downpuor of 647mm in a day in the last week of May,and desert areas have recieved rains upto 150-200mm in a day.

Now,why I mention these statistics is because this trend of heavy rain was recorded in U.K. too as per the article in "The Sunday Times" of 3rd.Sept. which I reproduce below. I am sure it would interest my readers .


"The Sunday Times
September 03, 2006
Britain gets a monsoon forecast: Jonathan Milne,

BRITAIN’S gentle drizzle is giving way to tropical-style downpours and cloudbursts as accelerating climate change disrupts weather systems, according to academic research.
Rainstorms have doubled in intensity in parts of the country and are becoming more concentrated in autumn, threatening the nation’s flood defences.

“Extreme rainfall” events, associated with the onset of climate change, are occurring almost a century earlier than had previously been predicted.
Some parts of Britain are now regularly seeing almost a foot of rain over 10 days. The worst affected area is the east of Scotland, which has experienced a 72% increase in the ferocity of rainstorms over the last 40 years.
Other regions which have experienced a substantial change in rainfall patterns are the northeast and northwest of England.

“Extreme rainfall has doubled over parts of the UK since the 1960s,” said Dr Hayley Fowler, senior research associate at the school of civil engineering and geosciences at Newcastle University. “Intensities previously experienced every 25 years now occur at six-year intervals. There have also been changes in timing, with extreme events now predominating in autumn months.”

Fowler’s findings come amid suggestions that climate change is playing havoc with the country’s weather. This July was the hottest on record for most of England, while last winter was the coldest for a decade.

The temperature extremes have meant British farmers are now planting walnut trees, olive groves and grape vines, which have traditionally flourished in the Mediterranean.
The new research, to be presented this week at the British Association Festival of Science in Norwich, finds that all Scotland and the northwest of England had an average rainfall of more than 8in over the worst 10 days of each year in the 1990s.

Parts of south Asia have fiercer downpours during the monsoon season. Mumbai in India, for instance, averaged 8.2in of rainfall over the same period, according to official statistics.
The prospect of a rain- soaked autumn will come as little surprise to some regions, such as East Anglia, which has just experienced its third wettest August on record.

Fowler predicts the greater frequency of autumnal downpours will lead to more severe flooding and structural damage, such as seen in Boscastle, Cornwall, in 2004 when some 8in of rain fell in just four hours.
“I wouldn’t live near a river,” she said. “We need to think about whether to build homes on flood plains. The government has got to take a lead. We can control what happens on the ground, but we can’t control what falls from the sky.”

The rainfall pattern in the south east has also shown major changes with fewer torrential downpours. This may be linked to an overall decrease in rain across the region, which has led to water shortages. Although there are fewer such events, they are becoming fiercer, meaning the south east is at increased risk of occasional flooding.
Widespread floods in southern England in October 2000 affected 10,000 homes and caused £760m of damage. "