Monsoon finally advanced into the national Capital on Tuesday, 16 days behind the normal schedule of June 27. With advancement into remaining parts of the country including Delhi, the remaining parts of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan, the southwest monsoon has covered the entire country as on Tuesday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

The normal date for monsoon covering the entire country was July 8 but it was delayed by five days due to weather conditions.

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IMD’s May 31 forecast for early Monsoon onset over Kerala raised hopes of fast advance across the country. But the Met department revised this at the last minute on May 30 and said the monsoon will arrive in India on June 3, two days later than the normal schedule.

The continued prevalence of moist easterly winds from the Bay of Bengal in the lower levels for the last four days resulted in enhanced cloud cover and scattered to fairly widespread rainfall, the IMD said.

“The monsoon advance over Delhi thus occurred on Tuesday against the normal date of June 27.”

The rainfall at Safdarjung observatory centre was measured at 2.5 cm followed by Ayanagar (1.3 cm), Palam (2.4 cm), CHO Lodi Road (0.9 cm), Ridge (1 cm) – all Delhi, Gurgram (5.1 cm), Faridabad (2.8 cm), Panipat (1 cm), Rohtak (2.2 cm), Hisar (3.3 cm), Fatehabad (3 cm) – all Haryana, and Jaisalmer (7.7 cm), Bikaner (6.8 cm), Churu (9 cm) – all Rajasthan.

The long-delayed monsoon finally arrived early on Tuesday giving much-needed respite to the citizens in Delhi-NCR.

The national capital along with adjoining cities including Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida, and Ghaziabad also received rainfall.

The southwest monsoon arrived in Delhi-NCR after IMD’s several predictions made in the last 15 days went wrong.

The arrival of the monsoon is announced based on factors such as wind speed, consistency of rainfall, intensity, and cloud cover. It is crucial to the country’s farm-dependent economy and arrives in Kerala first around June 1 before covering the rest of India in over a month.

The monsoon had reached almost all parts of the country but had stayed away from Delhi, Haryana, parts of west Uttar Pradesh, and west Rajasthan. The weather forecasting agency had predicted that the monsoon is expected to cover these parts by June — a little less than a month back but that did not happen.

The monsoon normally covers the entire country by July 8 even as it did so by July 19 in 2019 and August 15 in 2002. The monsoon advanced into Delhi on July 19 in 2002.

(With IANS inputs)