Monsoon is slated to make its earliest arrival in 13 years over Kerala. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Friday that the monsoon will make its onset over the State on May 27, four days ahead of its normal date of June 1.
IMD records show that the monsoon arrived on May 23 in 2009, May 26 in 2006 and May 28 in 2007. The last time the monsoon arrived in Kerala in May was 2018.
The IMD uses a specialised model that forecasts the arrival dates within a four-day window. It uses six predictors — Minimum Temperatures over North-west India, pre-monsoon rainfall peak over south Peninsula, Outgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR) over South China Sea, lower tropospheric zonal wind over southeast Indian Ocean, upper tropospheric zonal wind over the east equatorial Indian Ocean, and Outgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR) over the south-west Pacific region.
