Monsoon progresses, rains 34 pc above LPA countrywide, 42 pc above LPA in northwest

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 12

Riding over two low-pressure systems, one over the southeast Arabian Sea — which intensified into cyclone ‘Nisarga’ — and another system currently hovering over the Bay of Bengal, the southwest monsoon has progressed well so far and is all set to cover Maharashtra (including Mumbai, where a state-of-the-art integrated flood warning system, iFLOWS, was launched on Friday), Odisha and West Bengal and some more parts of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar over the next 48 hours, the IMD said on Friday

Setting over Kerala on June 1, its normal onset date, the Northern Limit of Monsoon (NLM) is currently passing through Harnai, Baramati, Beed, Wardha, Raipur, Sambalpur, Baripada, Bardhaman and Siliguri.

It has been a nearly normal advance over most parts of the country, except north-eastern states where monsoon has been delayed by six days.

For the country as a whole, cumulative rainfall till June 11 is above the Long Period Average (LPA) by 34 per cent. In north-west India, where the monsoon has not yet set in, rains in June to September season are 42 per cent above the LPA. They are 95 per cent and 28 per cent above average over the central and south peninsular India, respectively. However, in the East and northeast India, rains are deficit by 4 per cent and also late.

Under the influence of two current weather systems, the low-pressure area over the north coastal Andhra Pradesh and adjoining coastal Odisha and an east-west shear zone across Peninsular India, heavy to very heavy rainfall is likely over many places, including Mumbai — where iFLOWS was launched by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Earth Sciences Minister Harsh Vardhan for the early prediction of floods.

The system would help “predict floods before they happen, help protect property and save lives” and make the city become more resilient, by providing early warning for flooding especially during high rainfall events and cyclones, the officials said.

“Using this, it would be possible to have an estimate of the flood inundation three days in advance, along with 3 to 6 hours Nowcast, that is immediate weather updates. It will be very useful, especially if people need to be evacuated from low-lying areas as we will be able to forecast 12 hours in advance that a particular spot may get flooded. The system will also forecast the rainfall in each pocket,” the officials added.

A similar system developed by the MoES scientists is also operational at Chennai.