Tamil Nadu is a state in southeast India. One of the four Dravidian states of India, it has had more than 2,000 years of continuous cultural history. Tamil is one of the oldest literary languages in India.
Tamil Nadu has some of the most remarkable temple architecture in India, and a living tradition of music and dance. People who live in the state are called Tamils. Chennai, formerly called Madras, is the capital city.

Location and description. Tamil Nadu is located in southeastern India. To the east and south is the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Across the Palk Strait in the southeast lies the island country of Sri Lanka. To the north and west are the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala.

Climate.
On the plains, temperatures are always quite high. In Chennai, the average January temperature is about 25 °C. The difference between winter and summer is not as great as in north India, and the average temperature in May, the hottest month, is about 33 °C. However, temperatures are greatly affected by altitude. Kodaikanal, for example, at a height of over 2,500 metres, is about 15 degrees cooler than Chennai, and occasionally has night frosts in winter.

Because most of Tamil Nadu lies to the east of the Western Ghats, the climate is much drier than that on the west coast. The plains to the east lie in the rainshadow of the mountains.
Strong winds blow across the plains in the early monsoon season, but as they come down the eastern slopes of the hills they warm up and become drier . The districts around Madurai receive less than 75 centimetres of rain per year. The extreme southeast experiences almost desert conditions with less than 60 centimetres per year.

The change of landscape between Trivandrum and Madurai around India's southern tip illustrates the dramatic effects on vegetation and agriculture of this sudden decrease in rainfall. Tamil Nadu, and particularly the area around Chennai, has an exceptional rainfall pattern. It has about 120 centimetres of rain each year, most of which falls in what is sometimes called the retreating monsoon.

From October to December, weather depressions move across the east coast around Chennai from the Bay of Bengal. They bring heavy rains, often accompanied by storms, to the coastal belt, which decrease inland and southward from Chennai.
It is a season when cyclonic storms, from the east and southeast over Malaysia, also strike parts of the south Indian coast as they move first west and then north up the Bay of Bengal. Such cyclones can cause enormous disruption, damage, and loss of life, particularly when they strike densely populated parts of the country.

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