The monsoon continued to pound parts of east and central India even as the parched northwest awaited the first few showers of the season.
Indications are that the latter will get to witness these showers over the next few days, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) update said on Thursday.
RAINS ADVANCE
The rains have advanced into more parts of Gujarat region, entire Madhya Pradesh and east Uttar Pradesh, most parts of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
Even entire Jammu and Kashmir and some parts of east Rajasthan and west Uttar Pradesh too have been covered.
Thus, the northern limit of the monsoon has reached the arc linking Jamnagar, Ahmadabad, Kota, Dholpur, Bareilly, Dehradun, Shimla and Jammu.
The IMD hoped rains would march into more parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, west Uttar Pradesh, entire Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and parts of Haryana (including Delhi) and Punjab by Sunday.
49 PC WEEKLY DEFICIT
But IMD statistics also showed that the rains have been a worrisome 49 per cent below average during the week ending Wednesday.
This had come on top of the 18 per cent deficit in the previous week.
Global weather models continue to caution that it is ‘too optimistic’ to expect dramatic change in weather conditions in northwest India any time soon.
The current wet spell over central and east India have come at the expense of peninsular India, which is fast drying up.
As for northwest, the global models agree that some rain is there for the asking, but how long the trend would sustain is a big question.
BREAKING UP
This is because they suspect that the ‘enabling’ environment is breaking up. An IMD inference on weather conditions on Thursday evening too hinted the same.
The models persist with the view the rains would start withdrawing to east India and along the foothills Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Some rains may continue to persist along the west coast. But not over peninsular, central and northwest India, given the weakening trend in monsoon flows.