As rainfall in the first 11 days of this month was 24% more than ‘normal’, the overall season’s rain deficit came down to 12%, from 33% witnessed in June.
Continuance of the current spell of showers for another week may help the farmers to complete the kharif sowing operations which was down by 27% until last week from the year-ago level.
However, the sowing could still be less than last year.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Thursday predicted “widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls likely over western Himalayan region, foothills of the Himalayas, adjoining northern plains and north-eastern states” during July 16-18.
Also, scattered to fairly widespread rainfall has been forecast for the west coast and scattered rainfall over rest of the country during this period.
“Monsoon has not progressed in the past two days. The northern limit of monsoon (NLM) continues to pass through Barmer, Jodhpur, Churu, Ludhiana and Kapurthala,” an IMD official said.
The low pressure area over north-east Uttar Pradesh and adjoining Bihar persists and this will bring good rains in these two states in next 48 hours, he added.
The monsoon deficit in Bihar has now reduced to 6% from 49% on July 6.
The seasonal rainfall in Uttar Pradesh is now 9% more than normal compared with over 60% deficit in June.
Both these states are major producers of paddy and pulses and most of the areas (except western UP) are largely dependent on monsoon rains to irrigate crops.
As many as 16 states have received ‘normal’ or ‘excess’ rains while 13 are still deficient between June 1 and July 11, IMD data show.
Rainfall between (-)19% and (+)19% of long period average (LPA) is considered ‘normal’ and (+)20% or more is ‘excess’ for a state. The definition is different on all India basis.
The weather bureau data also show that 43% of the geographical area is still rainfall deficient.
The southern parts of Gujarat may get rains in next phase of rainfall due to a low pressure in central India after 2-3 days, said DS Pai, head of IMD’s long range forecast division.
Gujarat, the top producer of cotton and groundnut, has received 30% below normal rains so far, mainly due to 53% deficit rainfall in the Saurashtra and Kutch region.
The rainfall in July may improve further as IMD sees bountiful of rains in many parts of the country in the last week due to possibility of a low pressure building up over the Indian Ocean.
The forecast for July rain is 95% of LPA.