IMD predicts normal Southwest monsoon in India this year

New Delhi [India], April 15 : The national weather forecasting agency has predicted that India will witness normal rainfall during the southwest monsoon season from June 5 to September 30 this year.
The IMD has updated all-India 'rainfall normal' to 87 cm from the previous of 88 cm on the basis of the availability of new data from its network of rain gauges across the country which has been calculated on the basis of rainfall data over a 50-year period from 1971-2020.
This will now be used as a benchmark to measure rainfall in India.
"IMD conducts an analysis of rainfall on Long Period Average (LPA) - a long term data. IMD defines normal rainfall on the basis of rainfall data over a 50-year period. Until last year, the IMD used to consider the LPA of 88 cm of the 1961-2010 period. We've updated all-India 'rainfall normal' to 87cm for southwest monsoon for 1971-2020 based on data over a long period," Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General of Meteorology of IMD told ANI on Friday.
This all-India 'rainfall normal' is updated every 10 years. There has been a decrease of 12 mm in mean rainfall during the Southwest monsoon season from 868.8 mm based on new data of 1971-2020 from 880.6 mm based on previous data of 1961-2010.
IMD attributed the decrease in the average rainfall to natural multi-decadal epochal variability of dry and wet epochs of all India rainfall.
Mohapatra said that nearly 99 per cent of rainfall has been predicted across the country with a model error of "plus minus 5 per cent" adding that it means the rainfall will be normal during the time this year.
Noting that there will be a uniform distribution of rainfall across the country, the senior IMD official said that exceptions to this will be northeastern states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir and parts of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh where rainfall could be below normal.
Besides, there is more probability of normal and above normal rainfall across the country, he added.