A closer look at the district-level figures reveal that most of Marathwada and Vidarbha are in the red, facing a deficit in the range of 20 to 30 per cent.
Despite the late surge of monsoon rains over northwest and central India, the overall countrywide deficit will not see much reduction as monsoon enters its last week of withdrawal. On Saturday, the monsoon rainfall was four per cent below normal across the country with 25 of the 36 sub-divisions receiving normal rains, six receiving excess, and five facing a deficit rains. Scientists from India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that monsoon will begin withdrawing in another three to four days.
"The deficit may not reduce much in the days left. Northeast and southern peninsula are the only places that are likely to see rainfall in the coming days. These will largely be thunderstorms," said D Sivananda Pai, Head, Climate Prediction, IMD, Pune.
Even as the monsoon's countrywide performance has been on the lines of the forecast made by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), its distribution has not been uniform. This resulted in below par rainfall across the Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Marathwada, North Karnataka, and Kerala.
IMD data shows that July, the peak month for rainfall across the southern peninsula, was the poorest with a deficit of 36 per cent. The region saw better rainfall in August and September, reducing the deficit substantially. But, rains in the northwest and the plains are likely to end with a high deficit. As on Saturday, there was 31 per cent rainfall deficit in western Uttar Pradesh and 26 per cent deficit in eastern Uttar Pradesh. In Central India, eastern Madhya Pradesh has 23 per cent deficit and Vidarbha 22 per cent.
A closer look at the district-level figures reveal that most of Marathwada and Vidarbha are in the red, facing a deficit in the range of 20 to 30 per cent.
"A notable thing about this monsoon is that it has been marked by short spells of heavy rains followed by long dry spells. There are intraseasonal oscillations and variabilities that have not been fully captured and research is evolving," said AK Srivastava, Head, Climate Monitoring and Analysis, IMD, Pune.
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