The southwest monsoon finally advanced over the Capital on Tuesday after missing its normal onset date of June 27. The last time the monsoon arrived this late in the Capital was 19 years ago in 2002 when it reached the Capital on July 19.
With its advancement over Delhi, the monsoon has now covered the entire country, the India Meteorological Department (IMD)said. The normal date for the monsoon to cover the entire country is July 8.
Rain lashed several parts of the city early in the morning and continued in spurts throughout the day with the official weather reading recorded at the Safdarjung station showing that the Capital received 28.1 mm of rainfall between 8.30 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday.
The rain brought relief from the heat with the maximum temperature settling at 30.9 degrees Celsius, five notches below normal. The minimum settled at 23.5 degrees Celsius, which was four degrees below normal.
The delay in the monsoon had lead to a string of heatwaves in the Capital in the first week of July with the maximum temperature settling at 43.1 degrees Celsius on July 1 and at 42.6 degrees Celsius on July 7.
The IMD said the delay in advancement of the monsoon over the Capital was mainly due to no formation of low-pressure area over the Bay of Bengal, no presence of monsoon trough at mean sea level near Delhi and 5-6 western disturbances that moved west to east across north India, which dominated the monsoon easterlies.
The Met department got the prediction for the monsoon’s onset over Delhi wrong this time as it had first said the monsoon would arrive early — by June 15.
It then changed its forecast on June 14 saying the monsoon would be delayed further and that it would advance into remaining parts of western Uttar Pradesh, some more parts of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan and Delhi around July 10. While the neighbouring areas received rain, the monsoon continued to elude the city till Tuesday morning.
“Such type of failure by numerical models in prediction of monsoon advance over Delhi is rare and uncommon. It is needless to mention that IMD has predicted with high accuracy about the advance of monsoon over Delhi in recent years and also the advance of monsoon over different parts of the country during the monsoon-2021 accurately about four to five days ahead,” the IMD said.
More rain
The forecast for July 14 reads generally cloudy sky with moderate rain/thundershowers. The maximum and minimum temperatures are likely to settle between 33 and 24 degrees respectively.
