Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Seasons in India

Makar Sankranti ("Kite Day") is considered the start of "spring" in India. But being a tropical country, India doesn't have the seasons like temperate places do.

Officially (as in the Gujarat textbooks), the seasons are as follows:
     Cool Season: November through February
     Summer: March through June
     Rainy Season (Monsoon): July through September
But even that varies considerably throughout India, largely depending upon the monsoon seasons. The only thing everyone has in common is that from April through the beginning of the monsoon, it is unbearably hot almost everywhere in India.

Here is a climate chart for Vapi:

Rainfall and temperature data for Vapi.
I found this data on the Internet, and it is somewhat outdated (ideally, I should be using 1981 - 2010), but the pattern is still the same. In Vapi, monsoon is mid-June through mid-September, with occasional showers in October. December, January, and February are the cool months. This chart really understates the heat in April and May, when highs are typically closer to 40°C (104°F) rather than 35°C (95°F). October and November are also quite hot and humid.

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