Parts of central and northwest India had a temporary slowdown in monsoon activity, but that will pick up again from Tuesday, said a senior India Meteorological Department (IMD) official.
The IMD has forecast ‘heavy to very heavy’ rainfall over isolated places of east Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Konkan, Goa, coastal Karnataka, and Kerala on Tuesday.
With the southwest monsoon covering all of India, the Met department said that heavy rainfall is also expected in isolated places over Jammu and Kashmir, Leh-Ladakh, Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad (in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) and Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura and Gujarat.
The IMD has also predicted thunderstorm and lightning, accompanied with gusty wind speed reaching 30-40 kmph at isolated places over Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It has also predicted thunderstorm accompanied with lightning at isolated places over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Meanwhile, rains are likely to pick up in Delhi on Tuesday, when the city may witness light to moderate rainfall. It will intensify to “moderate to heavy rainfall" on Wednesday and an “orange" alert is already in place for the day.
The national capital recorded trace rainfall on Monday, causing the maximum temperature in the city to shoot up to 36.8 degrees Celsius which was 1.1 degrees more than Sunday’s maximum of 35.7°C and normal for this time of the year, the IMD officials said.
Delhi saw a low of 27.4°C on Monday, again normal for this time of the season. The relative humidity oscillated between 62-89%. At 2.30 pm on Monday, an air temperature of 35°C, along with a relative humidity of 62% brought Delhi’s heat index (HI) to 46°C.
Forecast for Tuesday shows that while Delhi’s maximum temperature is likely to stay around 36°C, the minimum will be around 26°C which is expected to drop down to 31 and 24°C, respectively, on Wednesday, on account of overcast skies and heavy rainfall, as per the IMD.
On June 1, Delhi recorded a "very heavy" rainfall spell of 117.1mm, with the monthly rainfall total currently standing at 119.8mm. The normal monthly average for June is 210.6mm and officials say sustained spells of rain over the week could take the rainfall total close to the monthly average in the first week of July itself.
