The official monsoon season runs from June 1 to September 30. This leaves just five days of India’s rainiest season after September 25. What were the key features of the 2023 monsoon? An HT analysis of the gridded data of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows that India is likely to end with an overall deficit this season. Irrespective of whether this deficit decreases from its current level, around a third of the country is likely to retain big deficits. Moreover, the overall performance of the season hides the fact that individual months and days were generally marked by one of the two extremes: much wetter or much drier than they usually are. The season is also ending with some of the longest continuous spells of dry and wet weather. Here are four charts that show these trends.
