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Bundelkhand gets moderate annual rainfall, ranging from around 750 mm in the north-west, to 1250 mm in the south-east.

But precipitation is erratic; a deluge is followed by long stretches of no rain.

Pre-monsoon showers with lighting and hail are witnessed.

Over 95% of the rainfall falls between June and September, with maximum rain generally in July-August.

However, the small amount of rainfall between November to May is also very important for agriculture in the region.

Annual rainfall below 400 mm  (366 mm in Jhansi in 1974) and above 2000 mm (2340 mm in Sagar in 1973) has been recorded.

Generally, in a year of normal monsoon, it rains for around 40 to 45 days between June to September.

Rainfall is often in high bursts; of the total 850 mm rain in a year in one place, 400 mm may fall in just 20 hours, with intensity going up to 30 to 50 mm an hour.

Thus rainwater has little time to penetrate the soil.

The problem of poor groundwater recharge is aggravated by the substratum of impermeable rock.

Four districts of Bundelkhand - Jalaun, Banda, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur and Mahoba - fall under the category of 'drought prone area', used by the 1981 National Committee on the Development of Backward Areas.

(The committee arrived at this categorisation by looking at 'drought-prone' blocks of districts. A block was considered 'drought prone' if  the pattern  and  quantum of  precipitation, during the main crop season of the area, made traditional cultivation of the main crop of the area 'hazardous' in three years or more out of every 10 years).

Recent, recorded history of Bundelkhand shows that the entire region suffers from severe crop loss every three years or so, either due to drought or flood.

One fact which is generally not reflected in government assessments of drought is wide spatial and temporal variations in rainfall within a district, within a monsoon season.

For instance, data from state irrigation department rainfall gauge centres shows that in June-September 2009, rainfall in Chitrakoot district varied from 576.5 mm at Karwi town to only 195 mm at Ohan dam, in the rocky Patha area (both locations are incidentally in the same block). At Karwi, 131 mm of rainfall, or around one-fourth of total rainfall in the four months, was recorded on one day, September 1, 2009. In June there was no rainfall at all at either Karwi or Ohan dam.

If rainfall at Karwi is taken as the `norm' for the district, then it would be concluded that severe meterological drought does not exist in the district, whereas it does in the Patha area.  

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