After missing several deadlines, the monsoon finally arrived in Delhi with heavy rains and thunderstorms on Tuesday morning,16 days behind the usual date, making it the most delayed in 19 years. The southwest monsoon normally reaches Delhi by June end but this year the Met office made a string of forecasts that all went wrong.  

“The monsoon has arrived in Delhi,” senior IMD scientist K Jenamani said after a spell of rains drenched parts of South Delhi, bringing the much-needed respite from the hot and humid weather.

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The IMD had a difficult time forecasting the arrival of this year’s monsoon in Delhi. After several failed forecasts, the IMD Monday acknowledged that such a type of failure in predicting the monsoon over the capital was ‘rare and uncommon’. 

Predictions gone wrong

The IMD started off by saying that the rains would hit Delhi  on June 15, which would have been 12 days earlier than the normal arrival time. But this went wrong as the wind system entered a “break” phase.

In early June, the Met office changed its prediction and said the conditions will become favourable for the monsoon tby July 7.

This too was revised and the Met office then pegged the monsoon arrival date at  July 10. But that was not to be as the  weather department was once again forced to revise the forecast , saying the monsoon may reach the capital in the next 24 hours. But, the  rains failed to keep the date on Sunday and didn’t show up on Monday too.

The monsoon finally arrived on Tuesday (July 13), almost a month late as compared to the first prediction by the Met office.

This is not a record though. In 2002, the monsoon reached Delhi on July 19. “In 2002, Delhi received its first monsoon showers on July 19. The city had recorded the most-delayed monsoon arrival on July 26 in 1987,” he said Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of the IMD’s regional forecasting centre.