Geography >Seasons and Climate
Plum Rain Seasons
The term "Plum Rain Seasons" has its name since in June and July each year when the plums in the Jiangnan Area becomes mature, the climate featuring continuous overcast and rainy days comes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, Taiwan, central and southern Japan and southern South Korea. After the plum rain season, featuring continuous rainy days, the weather begins to be predominated by the subtropic high-pressure of the Pacific and the hot summer comes.
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Plum rain season on way

THE plum rain season is set to start this month, heralding more wet days ahead, forecasters said yesterday. Despite the prediction, today and tomorrow are likely to be dry and warm, with temperatures ranging between 22 and 28 degrees Celsius. The city’s skies, however, will remain gray and cloudy, the weathermen said. Showers are likely to return tomorrow night, which in turn will lead to higher humidity levels over the weekend. The highs for Friday and the weekend will be between 27 and 29 degrees, with lows of 23 to 24 degrees, the forecasters said. The plum rain season is defined as having started when the weather over a five-day period includes at least four days of rain and three days of 22 degree-plus high temperatures.

Chinese Rainy Season: Plum Rains 梅雨

Rainy Season applies to different parts of China at different times over the course of the spring and summer. If you will be in China between April and July and will be traveling around the country, then it is highly likely that you will hit rainy season in some part of China. Rainy season starts in the south and moves north as the months go by. South China will be rainier earlier in the spring from April-May. The plum rains,梅雨 meiyu, or “may yoo” in Mandarin, nicknamed for the season when the fruit ripens, hit eastern China in May-June. The rains move north from June-July. 梅雨 méiyǔ July and August are Shanghai’s two hottest months with an average temperature of 28°C / 82°F. Early July is still within the Plum Rain Season (Meiyu Season), when showers alternate with sunshine and the weather is really hard to predict. When it is sunny, it is scorching; when it rains or when there is a typhoon, it becomes cooler. Sometimes, thunderstorms and lightening occur.

The plum rains: A primer

In some years the season brings abundant rainfall, which has sometimes caused disastrous floods. Due to the rains, the humidity runs between 80 and 90 per cent. At the same time, the air temperature is very high, ranging from 20 to 34 degrees centigrade. The air flows very slowly during this period, which makes the weather stuffy. Where does the name come from? Many people do not understand why this uncomfortable season is named after a fruit. The ancient Chinese timed the arrival of the season by the growth of the plum. Usually, the rainy season begins in early summer when the plums are ripe, and lasts about three weeks. There is an old saying about the rainy season: "When the rain falls on the ripe plums, there follows 40 rainy days". This year's rainy season. A thunder shower on June 17 heralded the arrival of this year's plum rain season. Though the weather is very inconvenient, meteorologists predict that local residents will have to bear the rainy days for another 10 days, into early July. Local citizens, especially countryside residents in Chongming County and Qingpu District, have witnessed a lot of rain, but more is on the way. The precipitation seems to be normal, if slightly above average. Unusual 20th Century rainy seasons in Shanghai: Longest: The rainy season in 1954 lasted two months, from June 1 to August 2. Shortest: The season lasted for just three days in 1958 and 1978. Most rain: The precipitation of 1999's plum rain season was about 800 mm, which accounted for 75 per cent of the normal annual precipitation. Least rain: The precipitation was less than 40 mm in 1958 and 1978. Disastrous seasons: The unbroken heavy rain of 1954 and 1991 caused serious flooding.

Knowledge Graph
Examples

1 The East Asian rainy season, commonly called the plum rain (Chinese and Japanese: 梅雨; pinyin: méiyǔ; rōmaji: tsuyu/baiu; Korean: 장마; romaja: jangma; Russian: затяжные, zatyazhnie), is caused by precipitation along a persistent stationary front known as the Mei-Yu front for nearly two months during the late spring and early summer between eastern Russia, China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

2 The high humidity in the air during this season encourages the formation of mold and rot not only on food but on fabrics as well.

3 In some years, the rainy season's actual beginning and end are under debate.