Monsoon is expected to hit Indian shores in mid-May as a low pressure area has begun to form over the southeast Bay of Bengal and adjoining south Andaman Sea on Wednesday morning, IMD said. With Indian farmers totally depending on monsoon rains for agricultural produce, the news may bring cheers to them and it is also expected that monsoon will be normal this year. “In association with the system (cyclone), the conditions will become favourable for advance of southwest monsoon over south Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea and Andaman & Nicobar islands around May 16,” the IMD said, PTI reported.
While the cyclone will aid in advancement of monsoon, the onset date for monsoon over Kerala remains unchanged from 1st June, Madhavan Rajeevan, the secretary with the ministry of earth sciences (MoES), said. The IMD has revised the dates of onset and withdrawal of the monsoon for several parts of the country this year. The revision is done on the basis of data from 1960-2019. Previously, the monsoon dates were based taking data from 1901 to 1940 into consideration. The onset of monsoon in Kerala marks the commencement of the four-month long rainfall season in the country. However, for states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh, monsoon is likely to be delayed by 3-7 days compared to the existing normal dates.
For the national capital Delhi, the new onset date for monsoon is now 27th June from the earlier 23rd June. Dates for Mumbai and Kolkata have also been revised from 10th June to 11th June, and for Chennai from 1st to 4th June. Extreme northwest India will be an outlier with monsoon likely to arrive a little early on 8th July, as compared to the existing date of 15th July. The new date for monsoon withdrawal from south India is October 15.