Rain in MALABAR MANUAL

By WILLIAM LOGAN
Another most striking point in regard to the climate is the extreme regularity as a rule of the seasons. It once happened to the present writer to be asked one day in the end of the month of February or beginning of March as to the likelihood of rain coming soon, and the reply given on the spur of the moment was that on the 22nd of March at 2 P.M. the first shower would fall. As a matter of fact, the shower did come on that day and at that hour, within ten minutes or so.

This was not altogether a haphazard guess, for the 22nd of March is the vernal equinox, and 2 P.M. in the day is precisely the hour at which most frequently the daily battle between sea-breeze and land-wind begins. In some seasons, though not in all, the first distant rumble of thunder along the line of ghats betokens that 2 P.M. has just struck or is about to strike. This daily battle begins as soon as nature's pendulum (so to speak) commences slowly to swing back with the passage of the sun across the equator into the northern hemisphere. And so it is throughout the seasons with a regularity as to months and almost to days and hours, perfectly astonishing to people accustomed to live in less settled climes.

Towards the end of May or beginning of June, the south-west monsoon wind finally obtains the mastery, and the regular rains begin and are usually ushered in by heavy banks of cloud to seaward, by a heavy swell from the west, and by an electric storm of more than usual violence. In some seasons, the electrical disturbance at this time is very great, the roar of the thunder is continuous for many minutes together, and the blaze of the many-coloured lightning flashes almost incessant. Once, however, the south-west monsoon has asserted itself, the thunder-storms cease, the wind settles steadily in the west, and as the season progresses, it veers a point or two to the northward of west, although inland it blows steadily all the tome from south-west.

In the end of September, the south-west monsoon dies away, nature's pendulum (to use the same metaphor) again begins to swing back, and sometimes battles royal again take place between the contenting aerial currents. In October, the north-east monsoon or land-wind has usually asserted itself, and with it, the rain becomes less frequent, the country begins to dry up, and by the end of December, the dry weather set has, as a rule, fairly set in.

(From MALABAR MANUAL. It was first published in 1887. William Logan was the Collector and Magistrate of the Malabar district.)

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William Logan's Malabar (Malayalam)