While much of India is used to heavy precipitation and frequent low-pressure systems during the summer
monsoon, towards the northwest and into Pakistan, such events are uncommon. Here, as much as a third of
the annual rainfall is delivered sporadically during the winter monsoon by western disturbances. Such events
of sparse but heavy precipitation in this region of typically mountainous valleys in the north and desert in
the south can be catastrophic, as in the case of the Pakistan floods of July 2010. In this study, we identify
extreme precipitation events (EPEs) in a box approximately covering this region (65◦
-78◦W, 25◦
-38◦N) using
the APHRODITE gauge-based precipitation product. The role of the large-scale circulation in causing EPEs
is investigated: it is found that, during winter, they often coexist with an upper-tropospheric Rossby wave
train that has prominent anomalous southerlies over the region of interest. These winter EPEs are also found
to be strongly colocated with incident western disturbances whereas those occurring during the summer are
found to have a less direct relationship. Conversely, summer EPEs are found to have a strong relationship
with tropical lows. A detailed Lagrangian method is used to explore possible sources of moisture for such
events, and suggests that in winter, the moisture is mostly drawn from the Arabian Sea, whereas during the
summer, it comes from along the African coast and the Indian monsoon trough region
