After early expectations of record rainfall, deficient rains in August have made weather forecasters scale back their estimates for the whole season. BTVI spoke with Manish Palawat, Chief Meteorologist, Skymet. Excerpts:
You recently revised the season-wide monsoon forecast from above-normal to normal. Take us through the details of the rainfall that has happened so far — three months into the season.
August has ended with a deficit of 3 per cent. The earlier forecast for August was 104 per cent of the long-period average. Now we think the monsoon will start withdrawing in the next 5-8 days from west Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and western MP.
Rainfall will continue for the Eastern and North-Eastern parts of the country, as well as the South. Till now the North-Eastern States, Bihar and coastal Karnataka have seen deficient rainfall. All other regions of the country have seen either excess or normal rainfall.
In the deficient areas, is there any hope for the shortfall to be covered in the last 1-2 weeks?
Light-to-moderate rainfall will continue in coastal Karnataka for the rest of the season. Parts of Bihar could see revival where there would be moderate-to-heavy showers. The monsoon trough is drifting towards the foothills of the Himalayas. UP and Bihar and the North-Eastern States that have seen deficient rainfall far will also receive wide-spread rainfall for the next 9-10 days. So we can say that the monsoon revival is in sight.
After September 10, rainfall will increase over the entire Southern peninsula, Maharashtra, western and eastern MP, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal as well as other North and North-East parts of the country.
In this time period, only lighter rain could be seen over Haryana, Punjab, Delhi and west UP.
June had a deficiency as well, but July picked up considerably. Do you think that the withdrawal could take longer than normal this year? Would that bode well with more-than-expected rainfall at the end of the season?
Rainfall was 11 per cent deficient in June. Thereafter, it picked up, and by the first 10 days of August, there was fairly widespread rainfall activity over the entire country. The withdrawal could be slightly delayed in Central India. The monsoon normally starts withdrawing by September 15 in the central regions; but our models indicate that it will persist beyond September 20 in the central parts of the country. Kerala and Karnataka could see a revival as well after September 12.