It is rainy in Bangalore. It has rained nearly every day since we arrived, although it is generally quite sunny throughout the morning and early afternoon – saving the downpour for the late afternoon or evening. On occasion, it rains all night.
The weather in many parts of India is dominated by the monsoons. Bangalore generally does not get the dramatically wet and dry weather of some other parts of the country, but nonetheless we arrived during the “rainy season”, June through October.
The campus, and many of the streets, are designed for heavy rain; on either side of the road there are gutters, at least 6” deep and often as much as 18” deep, to carry away the rainfall. On city streets, these are sometimes covered, with large stone blocks teetering over the gutter and making a sidewalk. Keep a sharp eye, though, because sometimes one will be missing!
August 2008 turns out to be the wettest in 10 years, with over 309cm of rain more than double the average August rainfall of 147cm! Some neighborhoods of Bangalore have flooded this week, although the situation is not nearly as desperate as that in northern India, where huge regions are flooded, thousands are displaced, and dozens or hundreds have died.
September, traditionally the wettest month of the year in Bangalore (over 200cm average), has just begun, and I’m concerned. I just met with the director of housing at IISc, showing him how the rain has seeped into each of our three closets, dampening our clothes and the paperwork we store. The photo below shows how the closets stick out from the main building; since they have their own (flat) roof they catch rain and it seeps inside. Mildew is clearly visible on the outside the top closet, which happens to be the one for the kids’ room.
This post was transferred from MobileMe to WordPress in 2020, with an effort to retain the content as close to the original as possible; I recognize that some comments may now seem dated or some links may now be broken.
David Kotz 