Rains may hit city on Sunday: IMD

The monsoon advanced over the Kerala coast on Wednesday

The southwest monsoon is expected to enter the city on June 12, officials from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday.

The monsoon advanced over the Kerala coast on Wednesday. The IMD officials said the current pulse of the monsoon is strong and conditions are favourable for movement towards the north. The southwest monsoon is likely to hit parts of Karnataka by Thursday.

“The monsoon is expected to set in along the Mumbai coast and north Konkan areas between June 11 and June 12,” said Bishwajit Mukhopadhyay, additional director general meteorology, climate services division, IMD. “While the monsoon is currently active over Kerala and has nearly covered the whole state, we expect it to advance northwards into Karnataka and Ratnagiri coast. There are chances of rains reaching Mumbai over the next three to four days.”

Private weather-forecasting agency Skymet had, in May, predicted the onset of monsoon in Mumbai on June 12. “We maintain what we had said earlier and stand by our prediction for the onset in Mumbai on June 12. While we have said the rain will be deficient across India, Maharashtra will do much better than the rest of the country,” said GP Sharma, vice-president meteorlogy, Skymet.

Meanwhile, the city continued to grapple with above-normal temperatures, both in south Mumbai and the suburbs. While the night temperature between 8.30am on Tuesday and 8.30am on Wednesday at the Colaba weather station was 29.8 degrees Celsius, 2.8 degrees above normal, the temperature at Santacruz was 28.6 degrees Celsius, almost 2 degrees above normal.

Between 5.30pm on Tuesday and 5.30pm on Wednesday, the day temperatures at Santacruz and Colaba were 35 degrees Celsius and 35.2 degrees Celsius respectively, 2 degrees above normal.

“There is a large amount of moisture being deposited along the Mumbai coast, which is leading to cloud formation that is trapping the heat during the night and early hours of the day,” said VK Rajeev, director, western region, IMD.