Southwest Seasonal Monsoon Likely To Be Normal This Year

Bhubaneswar: Southwest monsoon seasonal (June to September) rainfall is most likely to be normal (96 to 104%) of Long Period Average (LPA) over the country this year.

Quantitatively, the monsoon seasonal rainfall is likely to be 96% of the LPA with a model error of ± 5%. The LPA of the rainfall over the country as a whole for the period 1961-2010 is 88 cm.

Neutral ENSO conditions are prevailing over the Pacific Ocean and Neutral Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) conditions are prevailing over the Indian Ocean.

As sea surface temperatures (SST) conditions over the Pacific and Indian Oceans are known to have strong influence on Indian monsoon, IMD is carefully monitoring the evolution of sea surface conditions over these Ocean basins.

IMD will issue the forecasts in the last week of May 2021. Forecasts for  monsoon season (June to September) rainfall for four homogenous regions and forecast for the months of June will also be issued.

The monsoon is likely to hit Kerala on June 1.