Monsoon to take a break this week, no early arrival in Delhi

After a hectic advance in the first two weeks of June, the monsoon will pause by the end of this week, delaying its onset over Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh by at least a week.

The pause means that an early onset over Delhi will not materialise.

“From June 15, for a week there will be a weakening of the monsoon, it will take a week for the system to be organised and advance after that,” D.S Pai, senior scientist at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

Over the next two days, the monsoon will reach parts of Odisha and cover the entire Bay of Bengal and northeastern states. After Thursday, only scattered rainfall is expected over the western coast of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, and the north east.

The IMD cannot predict monsoon onset dates 10 days in advance. “Monsoon comes in phases, it was in its active phase and now its entering a weak phase,” Kuldeep Srivastava, senior official at IMD’s regional centre in Delhi, said. “For now we expect monsoon rains in Delhi on the normal date, around June 29th.”

A confluence of factors has put the brakes on the monsoon. A depression that developed in the Bay of Bengal has sapped energy from the monsoon system.

“All models indicated that the progress will be much faster in June,” said Mahesh Palawat, chief meteorologist at Skymet Weather, a private weather forecaster. “however, because of incursion dry northwesterly winds that are influencing the weather upto Telangana, the advance of monsoon will slow down from June 14,” Palawat said.

Earlier in June the private weather forecaster had given the estimated arrival date over Delhi as June 22. With a gap of seven days, Delhiites can expect rains around the normal time.