India’s rainfall deficit at 35% as monsoon stalls

More than a week after the normal monsoon arrival date, rain clouds have yet to reach Mumbai, pushing India’s nationwide monsoon deficit to 35% on June 16. The lack of rainfall is concentrated in areas not covered by the monsoon – Maharashtra, the Konkan coast and adjoining areas of central India – where its northward advance has stalled for several days.

India Meteorological Department (IMD) statistics show that apart from north-west India, which received 5% more rain than usual for this time of year, all other regions are in the red, including east and north-east India (43%), central India (63%) and the southern peninsula (14%).

Super El Niño year

While a rainfall deficit in June, the first of the monsoon months, is not unusual, it assumes additional significance in what forecasters worldwide have warned is likely to be a “Super El Niño” year.

Also read: Why is El Niño so hard to predict?

IMD’s analysis of all-India June rainfall for El Niño years since 2000 shows no consistent early-season signal. In June 2015, during one of the strongest El Niño events on record, rainfall was 14% above normal. June 2002 and June 2004, both years that ended in drought, saw near-normal June rainfall of around 2% and 1% above normal, respectively, with deficits occurring only in July and later.

Only in 2009 (47% below normal) and 2014 (44% below normal) did June precipitation fail as significantly as this year. In 2023, the last El Niño year, June closed about 8% below normal, within the normal IMD range.

El Niño – the periodic warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that tends to suppress the Indian monsoon – only takes hold in the spring and exerts its influence mainly in the middle and later parts of the season. “On the other hand, the June rainfall and its rate of onset is largely driven by local and regional factors,” says DS Pai, chief forecaster at the IMD’s Regional Meteorological Center in Chennai.

The first pulse lost momentum

This year, the monsoon set over Kerala on June 4, just three days after its usual date, but its advance along the west coast has since lost steam. Dr. Pai explained that the monsoon moves in pulses and the first pulse that reached the suburbs of Mumbai was not sustained. Instead, an “anticyclonic circulation” to the north of the city combined with westerly pressure from mid-latitude weather systems is preventing the monsoon from settling, The Hindu said.

The Madden-Julian Oscillation, a traveling band of atmospheric activity that can strengthen or weaken the monsoon, is currently in an “adverse phase”. This means the onset over Mumbai is likely to be delayed for another five to six days until the next pulse strengthens, possibly with the help of a low pressure system forming over the Bay of Bengal, he reckoned.

Dire warnings

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an El Niño advisory on June 11, confirming that the event had formed and putting the probability of it becoming “very strong” by winter at 63%. The World Meteorological Organization has previously put the probability of an El Niño between June and August at 80%. The IMD’s own June bulletin states that El Niño conditions are present and that the ocean and atmosphere have combined, with no positive Indian Ocean Dipole expected to offset this season.

The warnings were increasing. The IMD’s first April forecast put seasonal rainfall at 92% of the long-term average; its May update lowered that figure to 90% and assigned a 60% chance of a down year — the agency’s most pessimistic preseason call since 2015.

Impact on the farm

Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who chaired a review of kharif preparations on June 16, directed states to identify areas facing low or uneven rainfall and draw up crop contingency plans so that “alternatives, advice and assistance can be provided immediately” to affected farmers.

The Center has placed 150 to 200 districts under priority monitoring, ordered a weekly El Niño assessment and is encouraging a shift to cotton and pulses. Mr Chouhan argued that seed and fertilizer stocks were adequate and that reservoir stocks – at 30.4% of capacity in May, compared to the 25.1% average in previous El Niño years – left India in a better position than in previous shortage seasons.

Analysts are more cautious: rating agency ICRA estimates that a severe farm disruption could add about 0.4 percentage points to retail food inflation, a risk flagged by the Reserve Bank of India.

One likely consequence of El Niño conditions is a tightening of already tight fertilizer supplies as India grapples with Chinese restrictions on ammonium phosphate exports and increased natural gas prices also add to the cost of domestic urea production.

Monsoon vs West Country

The monsoon’s slowness also reflects the tug-of-war between the monsoonal and moderate weather systems, said Dr. Pai. The mid-latitudes are the zone between the equator and the poles, dominated by easterly westerly winds; Western disturbances – rain storms that come from the Mediterranean and western Asia and usually affect northwestern India in winter – are part of this flow.

“Whichever system is stronger dominates the Indian region. In summer, a strong monsoon normally pushes westerlies north; in winter, westerlies dominate and the monsoon retreats in the southern hemisphere. June is the transition between the two. Because El Niño has weakened the monsoon, it has not yet been able to push their advanced systems further south and back south. In contrast, a strong monsoon can interact with an incoming westerly disturbance to its advantage—the two systems are effectively kept in hands and deliver heavier rain over northern and northwestern India—while the weak monsoon is simply pushed back.

Published – 16 Jun 2026 22:45 IST