With two days to go for the season to end, the monsoon has resumed withdrawing from parts of North-West India, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) update said on Wednesday.
It has exited from more parts of west Rajasthan, and parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Haryana, having been delayed by weeks together.
‘Rapid’ progressThe US National Centre for Environmental Prediction indicated that withdrawal would witness some rapid progress to cover adjoining West India (Gujarat and west Madhya Pradesh), but only briefly.
This is because of the possibility of a fresh low-pressure area over East India triggering another round of rains in East and Central India and adjoining Peninsular India.
After September 30 (Friday), some of these rains could march into east Rajasthan, west Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, delaying the withdrawal process yet again.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts shows a wave of rainfall moving across Central India during the week ending October 6.
The subsequent week (ending October 14) too shows a wet spell the heaviest getting concentrated over west Madhya Pradesh, south Gujarat, and adjoining Konkan & Goa.
The rain deficit for the country as a whole until Wednesday is 3 per cent, and it remains to be seen to what extent the residual rains can improve situation over two days.
Rains beyond September 30 do not go into the South-West monsoon account, which means that the season will end in the normal range (between 96 per cent and 104 per cent of the long period average).
Meanwhile, during the 24 hours ending on Wednesday morning, the South-West monsoon was ‘vigorous’ over Chhattisgarh and ‘active’ over Telangana and Vidarbha. Heavy rain was reported from east Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand during this period.
The causative cyclonic circulation persisted, promising more rain. The IMD forecast for the weekend said that the footprint of an emerging wet spell over East India would start growing in size before covering Central and West India.