CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 85 of 120

Correct — A, The person travelling to Arunachal Pradesh. A blizzard needs three things at once — falling or already fallen snow, a strong wind to lift and drive it, and the low visibility that results. That combination requires high, cold, snow-covered country, and of the four States named only Arunachal Pradesh has it. The State sits in the Eastern Himalaya and rises to Kangto at 7,090 metres on the border with Tibet; its high passes and upper valleys, Sela and the Tawang country among them, hold snow through the winter and are regularly closed by snow and wind. The other three lie at low elevation in a humid subtropical or tropical setting where snow does not fall at all.

• (b)The person travelling to Assam — Assam is essentially the Brahmaputra valley, a low, warm, humid plain. Its characteristic hazards are floods, erosion and the violent pre-monsoon thunderstorms called Bardoisila, not snow.
• (c)The person travelling to Tripura — Tripura is a small State of low hills and valleys in the humid subtropical belt; its highest point is a few hundred metres and it records no snowfall.
• (d)The person travelling to Odisha — Odisha is a coastal State on the Bay of Bengal, and the hazard a traveller there prepares for is a tropical cyclone, with the associated storm surge and flooding.

Snow hazards in the mountains come in a family. A blizzard is a wind-driven snowstorm with low visibility. An avalanche is a mass of snow and ice released down a steep slope, dangerous to skiers, mountaineers and roads below. A whiteout is the loss of contrast between snow surface and sky that removes any sense of direction. All three belong to high, cold terrain, and in India that means the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan States and Union Territories rather than the plains.

The question is testing whether a candidate reads the north-east as a single wet, warm region or knows that Arunachal Pradesh sits on the mountain wall while Assam and Tripura sit below it. The elevation contrast is the whole answer: Arunachal's altitude runs from valley floors in the Brahmaputra plain to peaks above seven thousand metres, and the same State that has tropical forest in the foothills has permanent snow along its northern rim. It is worth noting how the four hazards line up with the four options — blizzard with the high mountain, flood with the Brahmaputra valley, and cyclone with the Bay of Bengal coast.

• A blizzard is a snowstorm driven by strong wind, with severely reduced visibility.
• Arunachal Pradesh lies in the Eastern Himalaya and reaches 7,090 metres at Kangto, its highest point.
• Assam is dominated by the low, humid Brahmaputra valley, where flooding is the recurrent hazard.
• Tripura is a State of low hills in the humid subtropical belt and records no snowfall.
• Odisha's characteristic disaster is the tropical cyclone forming over the Bay of Bengal.

• Treating the whole north-east as one climatic region; Arunachal Pradesh differs sharply from Assam and Tripura.
• Confusing a blizzard, which is a wind-driven snowstorm, with an avalanche, which is a mass movement of snow.
• Matching a hazard to a State by latitude rather than by altitude.

As a hazard-to-region match, as an identification of the hazard from a description of its features, or as a question on a named local wind or storm.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Kangto, the highest peak of Arunachal Pradesh, belongs to which one of the following ranges?

  • (a)Karakoram
  • (b)Eastern Himalaya
  • (c)Patkai
  • (d)Naga Hills

  Answer(b) Eastern Himalaya — Kangto rises to about 7,090 metres on the border with Tibet.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The violent pre-monsoon thunderstorms of Assam are known locally as

  • (a)Loo
  • (b)Bardoisila
  • (c)Mango shower
  • (d)Blossom shower

  Answer(b) Bardoisila — the Assamese name for the storms called Kalbaisakhi in Bengal.