Chandigarh, April 22
After last year’s near drought — like conditions, when it snowed less and the monsoon was not bright, nature’s cycle has turned this year. The Hyderabad-based National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) has indicated that the Himalayas have received double the snow than last year.

More snow means an increased flow of water into the rivers Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Estimates of the NRSA say that close to 4.9 million acre feet of water will be available from this bounty of snow alone. This much of water is good for about five months to meet the demands of this region. Last year the snow melt yielded about 2.4 MAF of water.

Satellite images of the vast catchment areas spreading across hundreds of square miles in India and Tibet show a huge bounty of snow, sources in the irrigation sector said. They explained that 90 per cent of the snow-bound areas had snow during the winter. Under normal circumstances, the snowfall covers 75 per cent of the areas. This means it is more than normal year.

A communication from the NRSA has been sent to the authorities here a couple of days ago after studying satellite images of the Himalayas and also of the Mansarovar lakes in Tibet. And these calculations do not include the water which will run down the catchment area on account of rainfall. This cannot be quantified as it will depend on how good the monsoon.

The main rivers of the north western region and hundreds of small tributaries originate from separate points in the Himalayas. On these rivers depends the cropping pattern and drinking water availability in Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, and parts of Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir. Also the waters help in running power generating turbines to produce about 4300 megawatts of power.

Last year the water coming from snow melt was just a little more than 2.4 MAF as a result the three main reservoirs — the Bhakra, the Pong and the Ranjit Sagar — were less than half full at the end of the filling season in September. The Tribune had then reported the matter. Winter rains eased off the pressure, however, while Punjab had to buy power worth Rs 4,000 crore from outside.

Starting from the winter of 1998-1999 the cycle of snow and then rains during the monsoon has not been perfect. Either it has rained less than expected or the snows have been insufficient. If the snow melt has been good the rains have failed. The three rivers are fed through glacial snow melts and rains during the summers and monsoons, respectively. Actually, September, 1998, was the last time when the massive reservoirs filled up to the brim. The reservoirs hold up 14 MAF of water at any given time.