Kerala has a tropical climate and enjoys the four climatic seasons - summer, winter, North East Monsoon and South West Monsoon. The summer season falls in the months April to June when temperature gets to a maximum of about thirty three degrees centigrade. The summer season is followed by the South West Monsoon which starts to pour during the months of June and it goes on till the month of September. With the advent of the winter season, a considerable drop in the environmental temperature is witnessed and one can get to feel a little chill because of cold wind. The winter season in Kerala begins from the month of November and lasts till the month of January or February. ![]() Kerala is popularly called a land of water bodies because of its backwaters and waterfalls, thirty four lakes with gleaming azure and emerald waters and several rain-fed rivers with distributaries and tributaries. Akkulam Lake, Vembanad Lake, Sasthamkotta Lake, the Ashtamudi Lake and Pookot Lake are some of the famous lakes in Kerala. The backwaters are the interconnected system of river estuaries and brackish water lakes. Canals link the lakes and backwaters to facilitate an uninterrupted inland water navigation system from Thiruvananthapuram to Vadakara. This interconnection helps in the inland travel in the region which is roughly surrounded by Thiruvananthapuram to the south and Vadakara to the north. Vembanad Lakeis the largest water body of Kerala which dominates the backwaters and it lies in between Kochi and Alappuzha town and is more than two hundred square kilometres in area. Kerala possesses a wide variety of soil like ferruginous, red soil, regur soil, sandy, peat and loamy soil due to its wide range of topographical features including coastlines along the Arabian Sea, valleys, abundant water bodies and hills of the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats form an almost continuous mountain wall, except near Palakkad. ![]() Kerala is endowed with a number of deposits such as heavy mineral sand, china clay, iron ore, graphite, bauxite, silica sand, lignite, lime shell, granite etc. However mining activities on large scale are confined mainly to a few minerals such as heavy mineral sand, china clay, silica sand, limestone and graphite. Heavy mineral sand and china clay contribute more than 90 per cent of the total value of mineral production in the state. |
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Geography of Kerala