The onset of the monsoon this year could be on 6th of June with rainfall at around 93% of the long-term average. It has been five days later than the official onset date of June 1st, says India Meteorological Department (IMD).
The IMD uses an “indigenously developed state of the art statistical model” to issue its operational forecasts of monsoon onset. The prediction comes with a model error margin of 4 days, which effectively puts the onset anywhere between June 2 and June 10, 2019.
The IMD press release issued on Wednesday states stated, “Conditions are becoming favorable for the advance of southwest monsoon over the southern part of Andaman Sea, Nicobar Islands and adjoining the southeast Bay of Bengal during 18-19th May 2019.”
“Although we have higher confidence in the persistence of El Niño conditions and a large-scale pattern that is not conducive to either an early onset nor greater-than-normal rainfall this monsoon season, we are not making changes to our forecast, given some hint that positive IOD conditions *may* be a factor this summer,” says the Weather Company.
However, the reports add, “We hope to have more clarity on the IOD ahead of our final pre-seasonal monsoon forecast that will be released on 31 May. For this forecast, we have persisted our forecast for monsoon onset on June 6 and 93% of total monsoon rainfall.”
