India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Thursday predicted “very heavy” rainfall over Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra over the next five days.
For Mumbai, the IMD has forecasted generally cloudy sky with a possibility of moderate to heavy rain.
The weather agency also said the southwest monsoon has advanced into more parts of Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Bay of Bengal, West Bengal and Bihar.
After stalling for over a week now, the southwest monsoon is set to bring rains over central parts of India in the next few days. These showers will bring a much-needed respite from the heatwave in the northern plains, two senior IMD officials told Reuters.
IMD scientist Soma Sen told news agency ANI that the monsoon has advanced further and is expected to advance even further in East Central India and East India – Chhattisgarh, parts of East Madhya Pradesh, parts of East Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Bengal in the next 3-4 days.
“There are pre-monsoon showers. Its impact will weaken from today. But easterlies will advance here due to which the temperatures won't go up a lot,” she added.
The weather agency said there likely will be “no heatwave” over most parts of the country during next 4-5 days.
However, parts of West Uttar Pradesh may experience heat wave conditions till June 23, which will abate thereafter.
Soma Sen also said the heatwave situation has now passed.
“A little heatwave has been recorded today too in western Himalayan region, northeast India but it has largely passed. Northwest India was under the impact of western disturbance, but it is likely to move from there from tomorrow,” she said.
Therefore, she said, the temperatures are likely to rise from the day after tomorrow.
"We don't expect it to be a heatwave situation with a rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius but west UP will continue to face heatwave situation for 5 days...We are not issuing any heatwave warning for Punjab and Haryana. We will keep monitoring it..." Sen said.
Sona Sen told ANI that isolated heatwave is very likely in Delhi on June 23-24, however, there is a possibility of a thunderstorm activity today (June 20).
Owing to a Western Disturbance over Jammu-Kashmir and neighbourhood in lower and middle tropospheric levels and an induced cyclonic circulation over north Haryana, light to moderate rainfall with thunderstorm, lightning and gusty winds will likely be witnessed over Jammu-Kashmir-Ladakh-Gilgit-Baltistan-Muzaffarabad, Himachal Pradesh, over Punjab, Haryana-Chandigarh-Delhi, West Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan today.
