August this year proved to be an 'extremely excessive-rain' month with record rainfall total (monthly and daily) witnessed in many locations over a hundred years, according to a Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) climate summary for the month released on Tuesday.
"The heavy rains contributed to record August rainfall total (monthly and daily) in many locations over hundred years," read the PMD summary.
It was also the "wettest ever month" for Sindh and Balochistan.
"Climatologically, August is a fairly wet month of the year but being 243% above than average rainfall, August 2022 happened to be an extremely excessive-rain month with 192.7mm (area-weighted) rain against its normal of 56.2mm and stood as the record wettest August since 1961," said the summary.
Sindh recorded 442.8mm which was 726% higher, Balochistan 154.9mm which was 590% higher and Gilgit-Baltistan 55.7mm which was 233% higher, all extremely above average rain figures during the month.
The summary said that for GB it was the second wettest month (record is 89.1mm in 1997) during past 62 years.
It was largely above average over KP — 163.9mm or 58% higher — and Punjab — 141.7mm or 52% higher — too, with ranking as the fourth wettest August for KP since 1961.
The AJK (146.1mm/-3%) was the only region with near to normal rain.
During the month, the number of rainy days were also considerably higher than normal over the country, especially in Sindh and Balochistan. On average Sindh and Eastern-Balochistan have experienced 15 and nine rainy days, respectively, against two normal rainy days in the month, the PMD said.
The wettest day of the month in the country was August 19 when Padidan (Sindh) recorded 355.0mm, which also proved to be wettest ever place in the region with a total of 1,228.5mm rain.
Single-day as well as monthly rainfall totals during the month were very significant, when 13 PMD stations broke their 24-hours rainfall record and 21 stations set a new monthly total rainfall record.
A look at some locations where new weather records were set:
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