The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Thursday that isolated places over Madhya Maharashtra, Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Yanam, Interior Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Karaikal are likely to receive heavy rainfall today.
Heavy rainfall expected in Maharashtra
The weather forecast agency further predicted that places over Karaikal, Kerala, and Mahe are also likely to witness heavy rainfall throughout the day.
In Delhi, the sky will partly be cloudy with the minimum and the maximum temperatures hovering around 20 degrees Celsius and 33 degrees Celsius. The relative humidity in the area would be around 78 percent.
Also, scattered to fairly widespread rainfall with heavy falls likely over peninsular India and northeast India during next 24 hours. Thunderstorms accompanied by lightning are also likely over east India and peninsular India during the same period.
The thunderstorm accompanied by lightning is also very likely over Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Sikkim, and Odisha.
However, IMD has also said that the monsoon finally began to withdraw from northwest India on October 9. This is the southwest monsoon’s most delayed withdrawal since 1961, when it occurred on October 1. The IMD has noted factors to determine that the withdrawal has begun over Punjab, Haryana and north Rajasthan. These include a persistent anticyclonic circulation (signifying calmer weather and in this case, the beginning of north India’s winter), and a reduction in moisture and rainfall levels.
This year the Southwest Monsoon gave India 10% excess rainfall over the long-term average, with Central India (including Maharashtra and Gujarat) experiencing a 29% surplus. The East and Northeast division got the highest deficit, at 12% below the long term average.
IMD said that the conditions are ideal for the monsoon to exit northwest India (defined by the IMD as a huge area covering Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan) by Friday. After that, the monsoon could withdraw from central India in 2-3 days.
Meanwhile, the end of the southwest monsoon will be followed by the northeast monsoon, expected to commence in the third week of October. The northeast monsoon provides nearly half the annual rainfall to Tamil Nadu, besides causing wet weather in multiple southern Indian states.
