SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 21 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following parts of the mountain will receive the most rainfall from moisture-laden winds?

(a)Leeward side
(b)Relief side
(c)Upward side
(d)Windward side

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Moisture-laden winds strike the windward side — the slope facing the wind — and are forced to climb it, which is the answer option (d) gives.

Rising air expands and cools. Cooling brings it to saturation, the vapour condenses, and the rain falls on that ascending slope. This is orographic, or relief, rainfall.

Having shed its moisture near the crest, the air descends the far slope, warms and dries. That far slope is the leeward side, and it lies in the rain shadow.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Leeward side — The leeward side is the sheltered far slope, where air is descending, warming and drying. It receives the least rain, not the most — that is what a rain shadow is.
(b)
Relief side — Relief rainfall is the name of the process, not the name of a slope. No face of a mountain is called the relief side.
(c)
Upward side — Upward side is not a term in this vocabulary. The pair being tested is windward and leeward, and only those two name the two faces.

Concept

Orographic rainfall is one of the three rainfall types, alongside convectional and cyclonic. Its mechanism is mechanical lifting: a barrier stands in the path of a moist wind and the air has nowhere to go but up.

The windward slope takes the rain, sometimes in extraordinary quantity. The leeward slope sits in the rain shadow and can be near-arid a short distance away.

India shows both faces at once: the western slope of the Western Ghats is soaked in the south-west monsoon while the plateau just east of it stays dry.

Windward and leeward are defined by the wind, not by the compass. The same slope is windward in one season and leeward in another when the wind reverses, which is exactly what the Indian monsoon does.

Key facts

Rain produced when moist air is forced to rise over a barrier is called orographic or relief rainfall.
The windward slope faces the wind and receives the heaviest rainfall.
The leeward slope lies in the rain shadow, where descending air warms and dries.
Mawsynram, in the Khasi hills, receives the world's highest rainfall from moisture-laden monsoon winds.

Study next

The three rainfall types: convectional, orographic and cyclonicRain-shadow regions of India, including the plateau east of the Western GhatsThe south-west monsoon and its Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal branches

Common traps

Reading leeward as the side facing the wind, which reverses the answer.
Choosing relief side because relief rainfall is the right name for the process.

SSC sets this as a definition question with the two real terms placed among non-terms. The same monsoon geography is asked as Mawsynram in the Khasi hills at 25 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.11 and as mango showers at 13 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.15.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.