Monsoon rainfall till Tuesday was 4% higher than normal or the long-period average. According to India Meteorological Department (IMD), the intensity of the rains is likely to increase in the next couple of days and monsoon would cover the entire country during the next 48 hours.
“Heavy to very heavy rain is likely over West Bengal, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab, west Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Jharkhand, coastal Karnataka and south interior Karnataka in the next couple of days,” IMD has said.
According to IMD, the average volume of rainfall during June 1-July 12 has been more than 280 mm which is 4% more than LPA.
Till now, 34% of the area has got ‘excess’ rainfall while 52% have received ‘normal’ rainfall. Only 14% of the areas have received deficient rainfall.
With the exception of Saurashtra, Kutch and Gujarat regions where rainfall has been ‘deficient’, most of the regions across the country has so far received ‘normal’ or ‘excess’ monsoon rainfall.
IMD categories monsoon rains under four categories — <90% of benchmark (deficient), 90-96% (below normal), 96-104% (normal) and 104-110% (above normal) and 110%> (excess).
According to the ministry of agriculture data released last week, kharif sowing so far has been only around 6% less than in the corresponding period last year.
Thanks to above-normal monsoon rainfall in key rice-growing areas of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Chhattisgarh, rice sowing has crossed the last year’s areas sown by close to 6% till now.
However, because of deficient rainfall received in key oilseeds growing areas of Saurashtra, Kutch, and Gujarat regions, overall oilseeds sowing is down 18% to only 82.28 lakh hectare.
In the case of cotton too, the kharif sowing is down 22% from a year ago to 67.89 lakh hectare. The agriculture ministry has also set the country’s grain production target at 270.10 million tonne for the 2016-17 crop year (July-June), up 6.7% from the actual grain production of 253.23 million tonne in 2015-16.
After two successive years of deficient monsoon (2014 and 2015), IMD last month had reiterated its April prediction by stating that southwest monsoon would be ‘above normal’ rainfall at 106% of the benchmark LPA, with a model error of ± 4%.
The heartening part of the IMD’s forecast was that there is 96% probability of monsoon (June-September) being normal or excess.