El Nino, A Western Bugaboo

Two international agencies predict ‘dry’ monsoon; state agencies say too early to call

- Sandeep Sahu in Bhubaneswar

IT means ‘little boy’ in Spanish. But there is nothing childlike in El Nino, a weather phenomenon cau­ sed by rising surface temperatures in the Pacific and triggering dro­ught­ like situations in southeast Asia. For farmers in Odisha, the dreaded and much­debated El Nino has, how­ ever, sparked confusion—for the time being—after two leading internation­ al weather monitoring agencies pre­dicted a long, dry spell this year.

“Hold on…,” says the local weather­ men. “It’s too early for such predic­tions.” The India Meteorological De­partment (IMD), the official weather bureau, issues its yearly monsoon bulletin in April and updates it in a couple of months.