Latest Monsoon Stories

Who would think that something like dust in the air could trigger rain? According to a new NASA study, this is just what's happening over South Asia's Tibetan Plateau. Very small dust particles called aerosols blow in from desert regions and collect in the atmosphere over the plateau's slopes early in the region's monsoon season, helping trigger rainfall.A monsoon is a seasonal shift in wind direction that alternately brings very wet and then very dry seasons to India and much of Southeast...

JAIPUR, India (Reuters) - Relief workers in India's flood-affected western state of Rajasthan stepped up efforts to rescue thousands of stranded villagers on Tuesday, as water levels began to recede, officials said. Flooding triggered by monsoon rains over the past week has killed almost 140 people and left hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the state, most in the district of Barmer -- a vast desert area dotted with villages bordering Pakistan. Over 800,000 of Barmer's two...

MANILA (Reuters) - Heavy rains, strong winds and huge waves, boosted by the southwest monsoon, damaged or destroyed more than 2,000 shacks in the central Philippines, disaster and local officials said on Saturday. Disaster officials said nearly 60,000 people in Negros Occidental province were displaced when waves as high as 3 meters (10 feet) smashed into coastal villages. "We've never seen such waves in our entire lives," Ricardo Presbiterio, mayor of Valladolid town, told Reuters....

HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - Monsoon rains and floods have killed 42 people in southern and eastern India and displaced tens of thousands of others, officials said on Friday. Forty deaths have been reported from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh since Wednesday while two people were killed in neighboring Orissa on Friday in flash floods. The deaths were mostly due to collapsing houses, falling trees and electrocution after hundreds of electric poles were knocked down by strong...

By S.M. Humayun KabirRAJSHAHI, Bangladesh (Reuters) - A rare drought in the middle of the monsoon season is threatening crops that account for up to a third of the country's staple rice output, especially in the north.Scant rainfall, falling river levels and lack of irrigation have left farmlands barren or sparsely planted, officials said on Wednesday.Villagers, many too poor to buy irrigation pumps or pay for fuel, were now praying for showers, which weather officials say are unlikely to...

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - Monsoon rains have inundated large parts of Uttar Pradesh state in India, and 21 people were killed in drownings, house collapses and lightning strikes over the weekend, officials said on Monday. In neighboring Bangladesh, at least 12 people have died in landslides or after being hit by lighting over the past two days in heavy rainstorms in the nation's east. Across India, at least 250 people have been killed since the start of the monsoon season in June. The...

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Monsoon rains have killed 41 people across India over the past two days and continued to disrupt life in the financial hub of Mumbai on Wednesday, officials said. At least nine people were swept away in flash floods in the eastern coastal state of Orissa overnight, taking the death toll in the state and neighboring Jharkhand to 33. The heavy monsoon showers also damaged hundreds of hectares of rice paddy. Landslides and flooding killed eight people in the...

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Thousands of people waded through knee-deep water in India's financial hub to reach work on Wednesday as monsoon rains continued to flood homes and disrupt transport in Mumbai. "Our area has been under two feet water for two days," Sumit Tambhe, a resident of the western suburb of Andheri, said. Municipal officials asked people to stay at home as much as possible. Metropolitan trains in the teeming city of 17 million were running late as rain water submerged rail...

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Heavy rains triggered floods and landslides in eastern India, killing 24 people overnight and disrupting life in the financial hub of Mumbai for a second day on Tuesday, officials and residents said. The bad weather was caused by a depression over the east coast and a revival of the June-September annual monsoon rains which had hit a lean patch, leading to a dry spell across large swathes of the subcontinent. At least 22 people were killed in the eastern...

By Ruma Paul DHAKA (Reuters) - Heavy rain sweeping across Bangladesh over the past two days has raised hopes for an early monsoon that weather experts say will boost agriculture. "The country is ready to welcome the monsoon about two weeks before the usual start in the middle of June," said a meteorologist in Cox's Bazar resort town on Sunday. The resort on the Bay of Bengal and nearby areas in southeastern Bangladesh recorded 350 mm (14 inches) of rain since Friday, he said....