An Australian official forecaster has said that the northern hemisphere monsoon (including India’s) is likely to remain inactive for ‘two more weeks.’
This outlook is contained in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s (BoM) weekly climate note dated July 17.
NO RECOVERY
Peer model forecasts elsewhere across the world seemed to broadly agree, saying they did not see any major recovery in the Indian monsoon.
But they do not rule out the possibility of a rain wave originating in the Bay of Bengal, travelling west across central India over the next few days.
This will bring scattered to heavy rains over Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
These rains are later forecast to head north to east Rajasthan, Delhi and west Uttar Pradesh in phases.
But large parts of the rest of northwest India are likely to go dry even as the rains get scattered over the foothills of Himalayas.
DEFICIT SITUATION
Interior southern peninsula may also be left in the lurch, possibly worsening the rain deficits, according to these forecasts.
The overall deficit for the country as a whole was unchanged at 22 per cent as of Wednesday.
Individual deficit for northwest India has worsened to 39 per cent. In contrast, the situation in east and northeast India has improved to 6 per cent.
In central India, the deficit totted up to 26 per cent over but peninsular India had slightly improved the position to 23 per cent.
Model guidance suggests that these roles may be reversed - central India might witness some improvement while peninsular interior might suffer.
SCATTERED RAIN
Meanwhile, some scattered to moderately heavy rains have been falling over parts of peninsular India over the past couple of days.
A rain generating system is active off the north Karnataka and south Maharashtra coast.
It has brought some welcome showers to the parched north interior Karnataka and adjoining Rayalaseema and Telangana in Andhra Pradesh.
An India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast said heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur at one or two places over northeast India during the next two days.