Asia Update #14

Wet weather returns to Turkey, where it is welcome, and Sri Lanka, where a longer dry period would have been much better. Heavy rains across southeast Asia continue to cause localized flooding and landslides. Heavy snow is likely in the higher elevations of the Middle East and points eastward towards Pakistan and India.

Turkey, and many other areas of the Middle East have (once again) resumed normal rainfall. Moderate precipitation stretched from the Bosporus to the Caucus and southward into Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. The system that brought these rains, and high elevation snow, is set to move eastward bringing more snow and rain to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India over the next seven days. This is likely to be the strongest storm of the winter snows so far this year, for many areas, and will likely make up any remaining snow pack deficits from earlier this season.

Moderate rainfall has returned to Sri Lanka. These rains are not nearly as heavy as what caused the destruction earlier this month. However, soils are still saturated and this may have caused localized flooding and landslides in some areas. The rains also likely disrupted ongoing clean-up efforts across the eastern and northern parts of the island. Unfortunately the rains are not yet over, and moderate, possibly heavy rains are likely during the coming week.

In southeast Asia, another round of very heavy precipitation spread across most of the area. Only Java and Sulawesi islands had week-long deficits. Hardest hit during the last week are the Philippines and Sumatra, parts of Borneo and mainland Malaysia including nearby parts of southern Thailand. Extremely heavy rains are possible next week in central and southern parts of the Philippines, Borneo, Malaysia and Sumatra. Continued localized flooding and landslides are likely. Java and Sulawesi will maintain their more moderate rainfall. Note that due to the amount of precipitation that falls in this part of the world annually, small deficits are not an issue.