Kerala   

When will the sky open up?

K.S. Sudhi

Cusat centre says the monsoon will start on May 25

RESPITE FROM HEAT: The rain that lashed the city on Thursday morning caught many Kochiites off guard. - Photo: VipinChandran

Kochi: The annual great Indian monsoon debate has started. When will it set in? Will it be a season of copious rain this year?

Early this week, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) announced that "monsoon could set over Kerala on May 30, with a margin of error of plus or minus three days."

Last year, IMD forecast that the monsoon could arrive over Kerala around June 7, and it started raining on June 5.

However, officials at the Centre for Monsoon Studies of the Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) say that the monsoon could start on May 25. While predicting the date of the onset, C.K. Rajan, Director of the centre, hastens to add that there could be a margin of error of three days regarding this date of onset.

P.V. Joseph, former Director of the India Meteorological Department, is of the view that the monsoon will set in on May 24, a week ahead of its schedule.

The margin of error? "A day or two," asserts Mr. Joseph, whose relation with rain is nothing short of a deep passion.

A huge cloud band has been formed over south of Sri Lanka and this is the monsoon band, asserts Mr. Joseph, who relies on the prediction system developed by the Cusat.

"We have been predicting the monsoon for the last four or five years, relying on this system, and there has not been much errors in it," he says.

What about the quantity of rain? The IMD has predicted that there will be an overall reduction of 7 per cent in rainfall this time. However, this predicted reduction is insignificant enough to affect the economy, he says.

Despite the confident predictions by weathermen, the man on the streets is a bit sceptical. He does not buy the predictions of onset of monsoon. For, he has before him the experiences of previous years when the monsoon upset the applecart of weathermen.

While the nation eagerly waits for the weathermen's monsoon predictions, it also has a series of experiences when the showers were delayed beyond the predictions. There were also instances when it started raining before the anticipated date.

Monsoon has been puzzling everyone for ages. As there is every possibility of the rain upsetting the predictions, the common man is left with just one option: waiting for it.

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