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Global models continue to predict a delayed monsoon onset and patchy progress of rain across South Asia with areas of dryness and extreme temperatures likely unfolding across parts of India, even as India Meteorological Department (IMD) has hinted increase in rainfall over the South Peninsula from Tuesday (June 7).
The week ending June 4, the first full week after the monsoon made an onset on May 29 over Kerala, has delivered a rainfall deficit of 29 per cent over the South Peninsula. Lakshadweep (+35 per cent); North Interior Karnataka (+25 per cent); and South Interior Karnataka (+6 per cent) held up one end of the scale even as the other was weighed in by varying deficits over the rest of the meteorological subdivisions.
This (Sunday) morning, the northern limit of the monsoon is stuck along a line linking Karwar, Chickamagalur, Bengaluru, and Dharmapuri in Karnataka.
Worst deficit in Coastal AP
Coastal Andhra Pradesh (-76 per cent) led the list with the highest deficit, followed in that order by Telangana (-60 per cent); Coastal Karnataka (-54 per cent); Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (-44 per cent); Kerala (-41 per cent); and Rayalaseema (-27 per cent) at the end of the first week.
BusinessLine had hinted that the monsoon may remain weak at least until June 7 in a report published on May 27. Latest IMD prediction that rains may look up from June 7 goes to corroborate this.
Monsoon may remain week
Overall rainfall may remain below the normal at least for another week (till June 14), as per the global models cited above.
A keen monsoon watcher and representative of multinational commodities firm from North Karnataka, who did not want to be identified, told BusinessLine that the monsoon has been ‘decrepit and nondescript’ since the IMD declared the onset on May 29.
He said the monsoon performance so far can be compared only with that of 2014 when the country ended up with a double-digit deficit.
‘Comparable with 2014 monsoon’
“Conditions continue to be hot in the hills, with no clouds and hardly any humdidity in the air marked by almost nil clouds,” the company official told BusinessLine on phone. “One dare say from the 2014 experience that the situation was not as exasperating because it was not as hot then,” he added.
He was fearful of a washout this year as was the case in 2014. This despite IMD having upgraded the monsoon this year to be 103 per cent of the long-period average from 99 per cent.
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