Monsoon to recede from next week, says meteorological dept

The withdrawal will begin in Rajasthan and gradually spread to other areas. By September end, southwest monsoon might recede from northern and central India.

However, sporadic bouts of rain may spoil the festivities in eastern India in the first week of October. “One odd spell during the Durga Puja cannot be ruled out,” IMD Director General Ajit Tyagi told Deccan Herald. The IMD chief, however, was quite categorical in describing the current spell of heavy rains as the last signatures of this year’s southwest monsoon in Delhi and surrounding areas. “By the end of next week, it would recede from most of the areas in northern India,” he said.

A day after an unusually-wet Thursday that led to disruption of air traffic, the national capital experienced yet another heavy shower on Friday morning, which threw road traffic out of gear in the north, east and south Delhi.

People and vehicles had to wade through knee-deep, water-logged roads in the morning hours, throwing the office schedule out of gear.

The meteorological subdivision of Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi received 990 per cent more rain than normal on Friday. Jammu and Kashmir was battered by 1,925 per cent more rainfall whereas East Rajasthan got 514 per cent more than normal rain. Rest of the country may expect scattered and isolated rainfall next week.

North interior Karnataka, Marathwada, Bihar and Sikkim and sub-Himalayan West Bengal received scanty rainfall – 60-90 per cent shortage – last week. But overall for the season almost the entire country except the north east, received copious rain.

Even though the met department predicted a below-average September, the cumulative seasonal rainfall for the country as a whole from September 1-14 has been 20 per cent above the average rainfall in all the regions except east and the north east.