Southwest monsoon has now covered entire country including Delhi: IMD

New Delhi: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Tuesday (July 13, 2021) said that the southwest monsoon has now covered the entire country. In a weather bulletin, the weather department stated that in association with the continued prevalence of moist easterly winds from the Bay of Bengal in the lower levels since past four days, enhanced cloud cover and scattered to fairly widespread rainfall, the southwest monsoon has further advanced into remaining parts of the country including Delhi, remaining parts of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. 

The monsoon normally advances over the national capital by June 27 and covers the entire country by July 8. This was the most delayed southwest monsoon in Delhi since 2002.

The monsoon covered its last outposts - the desert town of Jaisalmer and Ganganagar in Rajasthan - on Monday but evaded Delhi. It covered Barmer, another desert district in Rajasthan some two weeks before its normal onset date.

It had hit Kerala on June 3, two days after its normal date of June 1 and rapidly covered most parts of central, west, east, northeast and south India by June 15. However, its advancement over parts of west Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi and Punjab was halted due to unfavourable conditions like the westerlies, lack of any system that could push the monsoon winds further.

The IMD had initially predicted that the monsoon would cover Delhi and nearby parts by June 15. The wait, however, continued for weeks and then on July 5, the met dept said that the monsoon would reach Delhi by July 10, which again was not the case. This led to the IMD release an official statement that the faulty forecast was due to the failure of numerical models.

"Such type of failure by numerical models in prediction of monsoon advance over Delhi is rare and uncommon," it said.