Summer Rains

...and I love the Petichor!

Petrichor: the scent of rain on dry earth, or the scent of dust after rain.

The Hyderabad summer has been quite different this year, with the scent of the soil treating us quite often these days. While, it does rain on two or three occasions every year during the March-May period, this year it has been much more.
Over the last few eight weeks, there has been intermittent rains almost every week, in some corner of the city or the other. It does bring cheer and respite from the sweltering heat, not just the day temperature dips, but the nights also become pleasant with the plummeting mercury levels. But then, it also enhances the humidity to make the non-rainy Summer days unbearable. However, this year the summer, thus far, has been far less scorching.
The summer rain not just cools the senses, but also the ice-creams give way to the hot spicy rainy-day snacks.

So why does it rain in summer?

A brief reading of the science columns of the newspapers threw up some clear answers. Here is one:

During summer, the sun being overhead, there is intense heating of the land and the air above as compared to the surroundings. The air. on being heated, becomes lighter and rises.As the specific heat of water is higher than that of the land, it takes more time to heat the water, whereas the land gets heated up quickly. This causes air to rise, creating an intense low-pressure condition on the surface. As the air rises, it expands and loses heat.The warm, moist air on cooling thus, reaches a point called the condensation level, where the water vapour condenses and turns back into a liquid. This process of condensation leads to the formation of clouds in the atmosphere. As the clouds continue to grow and when they cannot bear the weight of water droplets, it leads to precipitation.This process of rising air is called convection and the type of rainfall which occurs during peak summer is called convectional rainfall.This process also leads to the formation of Cumulonimbus clouds (formed due to intense low pressure or atmospheric instability), which causes heavy rainfall, but for a short duration accompanied by thunderstorms.

(Source: The Hindu)

So, why am I talking about the Summer rain? 

Well, before that, a few lines from HW Longfellow's ode to summer rain:

From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures, and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.
These, and far more than these...!

The concrete jungle, that we live in, with its parched lands, too needs to quench its thirst. We cannot bear the relentless heat for too long, the natural way of cooling is quite welcome. well almost. The flip side to the summer rains, that come with huge gales and winds accompanied by thundershowers and hailstorms does cause much damage to the crops. It's fruit season and we have not been isolated either. There have been hundreds of premature felling of mangoes in my backyard too. We lost a few hundred mangoes in April and whatever was left, continued falling in dozens this May. 

It still augurs well to have summer rains, the climate change effect apart, the dip in temperature apart, the dust and pollution levels are vastly reduced. Breath easy!

... and then the famous Cliff Richard number of 1981 - "Summer rain will come again so the Harvest is a good one..." 

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