Year 2014 has witnessed a series of floods, droughts and an
unusual spell of hailstorms in a few states. A look at the damage and
displacement caused by them
Phailin ravaged over 300,000 houses in coastal Odisha
Since October 2013, when Phailin hit Odisha’s coast and left a trail of destruction, India has witnessed a series of extreme weather events like cyclonic storms, cloudburst, floods, droughts and hailstorms.
Though cyclone Phailin did not claim many lives, it left behind a trail of destruction that severely crippled people’s livelihood. The storm was followed by Lehar, a cyclonic storm initially predicted to be a very severe storm and later transformed into a deep depression.
Year 2014 began with the occurrence of polar vortex, a phenomenon that brought unusual chill to North America and Europe. The weather event did not leave India untouched. The country experienced hailstorms because of the unusual movement of cold westerly winds that came from the north and caused snowfall over the Himalayan region in January, putting an end to farmers’ dream of a good harvest in Maharashtra. While many farmers were yet to count the losses, another demon in the form of delayed and deficit monsoon knocked the doors of farmers across India.
The tragedy of extreme weather events did not cease with this. In September, Jammu and Kashmir witnessed one of its worst ever floods. It claimed about 300 lives and economic losses have been pegged at about Rs 5,000 crore. Along with Kashmir, northeastern states in the country also battled floods in the same month.
The latest in the series of extreme weather events is the Hudhud cyclone which is heading towards the east coast of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
All the numbers in the table have been sourced from various news reports
| EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS IN PAST ONE YEAR |
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| Disaster /extreme weather event |
Time of occurrence | State(s) affected | Economic Loss | Number Of People Displaced |
| Floods | September, 2014 | Gujarat (Vadodara) | Not available | 20,000 persons were evacuated |
| Floods | August, 2014 | Odisha | Paddy crops on 30,659 hectare and jute and vegetable farming on 6,566 hectare damaged in 509 villages in 156 gram panchayats | 34 persons dead, 9.95 lakh people in 1,553 villages of 89 blocks in 23 districts affected |
| Floods | August, 2014 | Bihar | 24 dead, 42,000 pesons shifted | |
| Floods | August, 2014 | Uttar Pradesh | 67 dead and 60,000 people in 9 districts bordering Nepal displaced | |
| Floods | August, 2014 | Assam | Economic loss worth Rs 2,010 crore due to floods in 2014, an average loss of Rs 200 crore is reported every year | Nearly 12 lakh hit by floods |
| Floods | September, 2014 | Meghalaya | Properties including road, houses, livestock and agriculture worth about Rs 2,000 crore damaged. | 52 killed |
| Floods | August, 2014 | Arunachal Pradesh | 403 people affected, 56 killed | |
| Floods | September, 2014 | Jammu and Kashmir | Rs 5,000 crore (as reported by The Times of India) , crops damaged worth Rs 6,611 crore, livestock loss pegged at 10,050 milch animals and 33,000 sheep and goats, infrastructure loss includes 6,000 km road network damaged and 3,000 water supply schemes affected | 5642 villages affected across the state (2489 in Kashmir valley and 3153 in Jammu division) |
| Landslide | July, 2014 | Maharashtra (Pune district) | 153 people killed and 200 feared trapped as 44 houses in Malin village in the Ambegaon tehsil of Pune distrct were flattened | |
| Cyclone | April, 2014 | Tripura (Agartala) | A tribal woman died, 1450 houses damaged and unspecified number of people displaced | |
| Cyclone | April, 2014 | Meghalaya | As many as 70 houses damaged | |
| Cyclone - Hudhud | October, 2014 | Andaman and Nicobar Islands | ||
| Thunderstorm | April, 2014 | Gujarat (Ahmedabad) | 5 dead, over 100 injured | |
| Storm | 27 May,2014 | Uttar Pradesh | 13 people killed | |
| Storm | 13 May, 2014 | West Bengal (Jalpaiguri district) | one person killed, 3,000 houses destroyed | |
| Monsoon rain | July, 2014 | Kerala | crop lossworth Rs 11.20 crore | 29 dead, 366 people evacuated |
| Unseasonal rain/hailstorm | 13 March, 2014 | Maharashtra (Nagpur district) | 140,000 hectares farmland damaged, state lost wheat crop over 232,000 hectares | |
| Unseasonal Rainfall | 06 March, 2014 | Karnataka (Bellary taluk) | Horticultural crops (especially sapota) lost, over 480 hectares damaged | |
| Drought | May, 2014 | Karnataka | 28 districts affected | |
| Drought | September, 2014 | Uttar Pradesh | 44 disstricts affected | |