City’s August rainfall deficit stands at 46%

MUMBAI: With just a day left for the month to end, Mumbai’s rainfall deficit for August stood at 46% on Monday, data from the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) monitoring station at Santacruz has revealed. Till 8.30am on Monday, Mumbai had recorded 288.8mm of rain as against the monthly normal of 531.3mm. Experts attributed the deficit to weakening of monsoon winds, but clarified that there are higher chances of rain for the city and surrounding areas during the next fortnight.

Light to moderate showers were felt across MMR early on Monday, with IMD’S observatory in Santacruz recording 1mm of rain up to 5:30pm. Most of the monitoring stations across the city, Thane and Navi Mumbai saw between 1 and 5mm of rain during the same period. “The offshore trough, which is an elongated low-pressure region off the coast of Maharashtra, plays an important role in bringing proper rainfall to Mumbai and the larger MMR (Mumbai Metropolitan Region) area. As the overall monsoon wind pattern across the South Asian region remained weak, the offshore trough could not gain strength during most of August. The overall monsoon wind pattern was weak,” said Akshay Deoras, independent meteorologist and PHD student at University of Reading.

Current forecasts suggest rainfall prospects for MMR during the first fortnight of September are better than those in August and second fortnight of September, although a continuous wet spell appears unlikely in the first half of the month. “There might be an active rain spell around the next mid-week,” Deoras added.

IMD issued yellow category storm warning for Mumbai for the next two days, indicating a very likely possibility of heavy rain at isolated locations. It issued an orange alert (very heavy rain in some locations) for Thane and Raigad for Tuesday and for Palghar on Wednesday. “On August 30, a monsoon lowpressure area is over Chhattisgarh and 15 degrees north of it is the east-west shear zone... rains will come to Rajasthan and Gujarat. For Maharashtra, too, it’s good news,” said KS Hosalikar, scientist, surface instrument division, IMD.