Rain deficit down to 23% as monsoon batters west Maharashtra

The rain deficit has been brought down to 23 per cent as on Wednesday with indications that the strong monsoon phase would continue early into next week.

India Met Department graphics showed shades of green sprouting and growing in the east and south of the map to denote areas converting into ‘normal rainfall category.’

In the south, the contiguous Kerala, south interior Karnataka and Tamil Nadu shot into the green signalling good spatial distribution over the south peninsula.

In the east and north-east, a green corridor cut its way from Arunachal Pradesh into Sub-Himalayan West Bengal and into the plains. It then checked into Gangetic West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Vidarbha, and west Madhya Pradesh. In the north-west, Uttarakhand alone is in the green while to the west it was Konkan-Goa which shared the honours.

Large parts of north-west India and parts of north peninsula are still quite in the red. It remains to be seen what a ‘low’ brewing next in the Bay of Bengal can do to alter the situation.

Meanwhile on Thursday, a vigorous monsoon current entered west Rajasthan, the last meteorological outpost on the north-west front overnight. Elsewhere, it was active over east Rajasthan, Konkan-Goa, Madhya Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha during the 24 hours ending in the morning.

The monsoon reserved its virulent best during the period for western Maharashtra, with popular hill station Mahabaleshwar recording 43 cm of rain. Other centres receiving major rainfall were Dahanu-27 cm; Silvasa and Bhira-19 cm each; Shirali-14 cm; Phulbani, Honnavar and Karwar-13 cm each; Ratnagiri-12 cm; Valsad-11 cm; and Goa-10 cm.

On Thursday, as expected, the rain-driving low-pressure area over northwest Bay of Bengal managed to wash over land but weakened in the process.

It lay as a conventional ‘low’ this morning over interior Odisha. It is expected to move further west-north-west during the next two days. The weakening came after an eye-to-eye duel with a cyclonic air circulation over west Madhya Pradesh in which the latter seemed to have come out unscathed.

It only moved a little west-northwest with one foot over adjoining Rajasthan, a Met Department update said. The Met has forecast heavy to very heavy falls over parts of east India, central India and west India during the next two days.