JOIN USMonsoon to reach Kerala coast by June 5: IMD
The onset of the south-west monsoon over Kerala may be slightly delayed this year with the India Meteorological Department announcing June 5 as the date when the rain clouds will reach the Malabar coast.
“The onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala is likely to be slightly delayed as compared to the normal onset date of June 1. The monsoon onset over Kerala this year is likely to be on June 5 with a model error of 4 days on either side,” the IMD said in a statement.
This is the third time in the last six years (2016 and 2019 were the previous two years) when the weather bureau predicted an onset well into the first week of June.
In three of the last six years, the monsoon actually entered Kerala in the first week of June – June 5 in 2015 and June 8 in 2016 as well as 2019.
Last month IMD forecast that India would experience a normal monsoon in which it would receive 100% of its long-term average rainfall between June and September.
The south-west monsoon remains the lifeblood of the Indian economy on the basis of which India hopes to record good agricultural productivity to alleviate some of the economic pain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
At present, there is a well-marked low-pressure area lying over southeast Bay of Bengal and neighbourhood. It is very likely to concentrate into a depression over the same region in the next 12 hours and further intensify into a cyclonic storm by May 16 evening.
Associated with this event, conditions are likely to become favourable for the advance of southwest monsoon into the Andaman Sea, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and some parts of southeast Bay of Bengal, during next 48 hours.
However, past data suggest that there is no association of the date of monsoon advance over the Andaman Sea either with the date of monsoon onset over Kerala or with the seasonal monsoon rainfall over the country.