India’s extreme rain
Every reading against its published limit. Every gap named.
Year round
PERIODIC — an archive, not a live gauge
13days
over IMD’s heavy-rain threshold in 2025 · Mangaluru, Karnataka
4,283 mm in the year, +69% on its normal
IMD calls 64.5 mm in 24 hours heavy rain. Crossed 13 times in one year — and no rule caps how often.
12 grid points, ECMWF ERA5 / ERA5-Land reanalysis. What counts as extreme.
A year’s rain in an afternoon
Across these 12 cities there is more rain, and more days heavy enough to cross IMD’s threshold. What this data does not show is rain getting more concentrated — that is on the page too.
A flood is not a weather event. It is rainfall meeting a decision about where to build.
Annual rainfall rose at 9 of these 12 cities, and extreme-rain days at 8. 6 of 12 are already above their own normal this season.
The heaviest 24 hours in the whole archive is 336 mm at Patna on 30 June 1996 — 1.6× IMD’s top class, and thirty years ago. The record is not the story here; the frequency is. 2025’s heaviest day anywhere on this list was 159 mm at Guwahati.
Who it kills
3,594 people in 2024, from five named causes in one official table. Four of the five rose.
3,594
deaths from flood, landslide, lightning, torrential rain and cyclone, 2024
361 + 39 + 2825 + 351 + 18 for 2024; 266 + 61 + 2560 + 239 + 2 for 2023. Addition on five published rows of one table, nothing else.
2,825
of them from lightning alone
More than the other four causes put together (769). Lightning is the largest single killer in India’s whole table of deaths from forces of nature, and it is almost never the subject of a climate story.
Counted or measuredModelled
The five causes, 2024
Landslide deaths rose 46.9% and flood deaths 35.7% in one year. Cyclone deaths went from 2 to 18 — a small number moving a long way, which is what a single landfall looks like in an annual table.
These are recorded deaths, and they are a floor. A death enters this table only if an authority attributed it to a named cause and filed it. And 1,626 deaths in the same table — 20.6% — have no named cause at all.
There is no national count of landslide EVENTS, flash floods or cloudbursts. NCRB counts deaths by cause; nobody publishes how many times the ground moved. So this page can tell you how many people a landslide killed and not how many landslides there were.
What counts as extreme
IMD classifies a rainfall day, and the boundaries are its own. So an extreme rainfall day is a countable event, not an adjective.
Every “extreme rain day” on this page is a day that crossed 64.5 mm at that grid point. Nothing here is a judgement about whether the rain was unusual — it is a comparison against a notified boundary.
IMD classifies a DAY, not a storm. 200 mm in three hours and 200 mm spread over a full day are the same category and are not the same event. That distinction is why a day-class cannot tell you whether a street flooded.
Not just the monsoon
Extreme-rain days are counted over the WHOLE YEAR, not just the monsoon. Chennai's extreme rain is the northeast monsoon in October and November, and a June-September window would miss it entirely. The monsoon total is reported separately per station.
The monsoon total is still reported for every city, and the season-to-date figure is compared with the same calendar dates in the 1991-2020 normal — never with a whole-season normal, which always makes a season look dry.
Three things, named rather than estimated
- CLOUDBURSTS ARE NOT COUNTED. IMD defines one as 100 mm or more in a single hour. ERA5 is a ~9 km reanalysis that smooths convection, so a real cloudburst appears in it as an ordinary wet hour — counting them here would return roughly zero everywhere, and that zero would be a fact about the instrument, not about India. There is also no public national cloudburst register to check against.
- FLASH FLOODS ARE NOT COUNTED for the same reason: there is no public national register of flash flood events, and rainfall alone does not determine whether one happens — terrain, land use and drainage do.
- LANDSLIDE COUNTS are not published nationally either. NCRB publishes landslide DEATHS, which is a different quantity and is used instead, from its own table.
- India's official rainfall departures are IMD's, computed on its own gauge network by subdivision. These are computed here from a reanalysis and are not IMD's figures.
A zero from the wrong instrument is not a zero. A 9 km reanalysis asked how many 100 mm hours India had would answer “almost none”, and that answer would be about the model, not the country.
Sources. Categories: India Meteorological Department — 24-hour rainfall day categories. Readings: Open-Meteo ERA5 archive. Deaths: Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2024, Table 1.0 — Number and Share of Accidental Deaths due to Forces of Nature and Other Causes, 2023 & 2024.
Twelve cities
Days over IMD's heavy-rain threshold in 2025, and the year's total beside it.
A sum of station-days, NOT a national count of extreme rainfall days. Different quantities, and this site does not blur them. 32 station-days across 12 cities in 2025. All requested stations answered.
Every city against its own normal
All figures in millimetres unless marked. “Top 5 days” is the share of the year’s rain that fell on its five wettest days — one division on two measured numbers, and the closest this page gets to describing how concentrated the rain is.
What is changing
More rain, in more extreme days. The concentration is the part that is not moving.
Four measures, the first eighteen years against the last, counted across all 12 cities. The pale bar is cities where it rose, the grey where it did not move, the dark where it fell.
Rainfall is up at 9 of 12 cities and extreme days at 8. But the share arriving in the five wettest days is down at 8 of them — so this dataset shows more rain and more extreme days without showing rain getting more concentrated. Both things are on the page because both are what it measured.
Counted as cities, never averaged. How many of the reporting stations move each way between the first and second halves of the record. Counted as stations, never averaged into a national trend. And ERA5 reanalysis — a model constrained by observations. Rain is far more local than heat: one gauge can record a cloudburst another two kilometres away never sees, and a 9 km cell has one answer.
And who is looking
Views of the English Wikipedia article on climate change in India. Lighter bars are monsoon months. Peak 8,800 in Jan 2022, floor 1,246 in Mar 2026 — 7.1×. It measures attention, never rainfall.
What is being said
The register. Reporting is tagged as reporting.
45 items from 20 publishers. A headline is evidence that something was said, never that it is true.
Read the 40 most recent items
- At least 16 killed as heavy rain triggers landslides, flash floods across north and east IndiaThe New Indian Express · 19 Jul 2026
- At least 25 dead as monsoon rains cause havoc across IndiaThe Independent · 20 Jul 2026
- Watch: Flash floods ravage Arunachal, Assam, submerge roads, trigger landslideThe Times of India · 29 Jun 2026
- Extreme weather events of 2025 send a stark warning as India enters 2026India Today · 02 Jan 2026
- Fears death toll could rise as flash floods and cloudbursts hit IndiaThe Independent · 20 Jul 2026
- 7 dead in landslide and cloudburst as heavy rain wreaks havoc across IndiaNews Arena India · 16 Sep 2025
- Himachal monsoon 2025 claims 386 lives, causes ₹4,465 crore losses: SDMABusiness Standard · 13 Sep 2025
- Situation Report 2 - HP Cloudbursts, Flash Floods, Landslides, Date: 02nd July 2025, Time: 10:00AMReliefWeb · 02 Jul 2025
- Arunachal Flash Floods: Death Toll Rises To 3, Rescue Ops On, 7 Districts Cut Off By LandslidesThe Times of India · 28 Jun 2026
- 18 dead in landslide, cloudburst as relentless rain paralyses states across IndiaIndia Today · 16 Sep 2025
- At least 17 dead, 13 missing as floods, landslides wreak havoc in Dehradun, neighbouring areasThe New Indian Express · 16 Sep 2025
- Himachal Pradesh counts losses of over Rs 4,000 crore from monsoonBusiness Standard · 07 Sep 2025
- Himachal Pradesh rains: 3 killed in landslide; floods wreak havoc in DharampurThe Times of India · 16 Sep 2025
- Floods ravage Himachal, landslides in J&K, Arunachal amid heavy rain; 10 deadIndia Today · 26 Aug 2025
- Flash flood in J&K: Cloudburst in Reasi district triggers panic, mudslides block roads; no casualties repThe Times of India · 15 Sep 2025
- Cloudbursts rip through Jammu’s mountains, 11 dead as Aug rain toll climbs to 122The Times of India · 31 Aug 2025
- Govt forms teams to assess flood damage in HP, J&K, Punjab and UttarakhandBusiness Standard · 31 Aug 2025
- At least four dead, dozens missing as flash floods hit north India villageAl Jazeera · 05 Aug 2025
- Rain Fury In North India: Floods, Landslides Wreak Havoc in J&K, Uttarakhand - India TodayIndia Today · 30 Aug 2025
- Family of 7 killed in Reasi, 4 dead in Ramban as heavy rain batters J&KIndia Today · 30 Aug 2025
- Himachal landslide: death toll climbs to 80 amid ongoing rescue ops; damages estimated at Rs 692 crore so farThe Indian Express · 08 Jul 2025
- Flash floods kill at least 159 people in Pakistan after huge cloudburstThe Guardian · 15 Aug 2025
- Flash floods kill hundreds in Pakistan, Indiadw.com · 16 Aug 2025
- Cloudbursts, flash floods kill 43 in Himachal Pradesh, 37 still missingThe Indian Express · 04 Jul 2025
- Himachal monsoon toll hits 310; 158 rain-related, 152 road accident deathsBusiness Standard · 28 Aug 2025
- Flash floods kill more than 280 people in India and Pakistan as thousands fleeAP News · 15 Aug 2025
- 705 deaths in 10 years: Multiple studies warn of flash floods emerging as major killer in Uttarakhand; clThe Times of India · 10 Aug 2025
- Himachal reels under monsoon fury: 23 flash floods, 19 cloud bursts, 16 landslides | India NewsHindustan Times · 06 Jul 2025
- Cloudburst in Kathua triggers landslide, flash floods: 7 dead, trains disrupted, CM announces ex-gratia –The Times of India · 17 Aug 2025
- At least 337 killed in Pakistan floods, gov’t defends emergency responseAl Jazeera · 17 Aug 2025
- Flash Floods In North India: Schools Shut In Uttarakhand, Death Toll Rises To 320 In HimachalNews18 · 31 Aug 2025
- 78 Dead In Himachal Flash Floods, 4 Uttarakhand Districts On Landslide AlertNDTV · 07 Jul 2025
- Himachal Pradesh: Cloudbursts, landslides claim 91 lives since June 20Business Standard · 11 Jul 2025
- Himachal Pradesh: 7 districts face flash flood risk, 225 roads closedBusiness Standard · 08 Jul 2025
- Himachal rains: Rescue operations on to trace 30 missing after cloudbursts, landslides in MandiThe New Indian Express · 07 Jul 2025
- 56 dead as Kashmir cloudburst triggers flash floodsGulf News · 14 Aug 2025
- Monsoon fury wreaks havoc in Himachal; 287 dead, 346 roads blockedBusiness Standard · 22 Aug 2025
- Himachal floods: 143 dead in rain-related incidents, 133 in road accidentsBusiness Standard · 20 Aug 2025
- Heavy rains in north India leave over 28 dead, trigger floods & landslidesBusiness Standard · 12 Aug 2024
- Red alert in Himachal for heavy rain as state battles floods, landslidesIndia Today · 06 Jul 2025
Publishers: Business Standard (9) · The Times of India (7) · India Today (6) · The New Indian Express (3) · The Independent (2) · Al Jazeera (2) · The Indian Express (2) · CBC (2) · News Arena India (1) · ReliefWeb (1) · The Guardian (1) · dw.com (1) · AP News (1) · Hindustan Times (1) · News18 (1) · NDTV (1) · Gulf News (1) · India TV News (1) · ABP Live English (1) · TimelineDaily (1)
Coverage follows the flood, not the rainfall. A 300 mm day in a place with drainage is a wet afternoon. The same day where a lake was built over is a disaster. The rain is the same; only one of them gets a headline — and it is the second one that tells you something about a city.
What you can do
Rainfall is weather. A flood is a decision.
Find out what was there before
Most urban flooding happens where water used to go — a lake, a nala, a floodplain. City master plans and old survey maps are public. If your street floods, something was built on the way out.
Lightning is the one you can act on today
2,825 deaths a year, mostly outdoors, mostly avoidable with thirty minutes of shelter. It is the largest killer on this page and the cheapest to reduce.
Ask who signed it off
Every building on a floodplain has an approval with a name on it. That is a public record, and it is a more useful question than how much it rained.
Every figure here is public, dated and reproducible from the source named beside it — and the three things that could not be counted are named where they would have gone.
This is what we are doing.
It is not enough.
The work against this reading
Mostly the written record, and going to look. Three of the essays on this site were reported out of flood years, and Gram Anubhav takes groups into villages living with this, run with over a hundred grassroots partners in the villages themselves.
And why it is not a reply
Publishing and going to see are not resilience. Swechha does not build drainage, and nothing here reduces the 3,594 deaths this page counts. What the work does is make the count harder to ignore — a smaller claim than it sounds, and the only one the evidence supports.
Once a month, what these numbers did.
One email. What the six readings did that month, what moved and what did not, and what we did about it. Nothing else, ever — no appeals between digests, and your address is never shared with anybody.
Confirm by email before anything is stored. Every message carries a one-click link to stop them.