September rainfall may take a dip now

The first week of September has been extremely important for the country in terms of Monsoon rain. Heavy showers during this period have helped in pulling down the national cumulative deficit to a large extent. But the threat of a drought still remains as June and July had left behind a huge deficit.

Rainfall during August

After Monsoon performed extremely poorly during these two months, some improvement was observed in August. The first week of the month received fairly good rain and the national cumulative deficit during this period came down to 18% from 23%. However, it stagnated after that and kept oscillating between 17% and 18% for the entire month.

Rainfall during September

September started on a very good note with the first 9 days of the month observing above normal rainfall. On the 5^th of September there was 18.6 mm of rain against the daily average of 6.8 mm, which means it was triple the amount. Similarly, 13 mm of rain was observed on 4^th September against the daily average of 7 mm.

This spell of very good rain has pulled down the deficit to 11% from 18%. During these nine days, the country has already received 103 mm of rain against the monthly average of 173 mm, which is about 2/3^rd of the monthly rainfall.

But now the rainfall belt will shrink and the amount will reduce. Pockets of significant rain are going to be isolated and few due to which the national deficit is likely to get arrested or may increase marginally.

It’s also the time for the Southwest Monsoon to commence withdrawal from some parts of the country - starting with west Rajasthan - and gradually cover parts of North and Central India. Following this activity these areas will observe minimal rainfall.