54 days & counting: Pune’s Shivajinagar sees its longest streak without double-digit rain since 2018

Pune: Shivajinagar has now gone 54 consecutive days without recording a single day of double-digit rainfall (10mm or more in 24 hours) this rainy season, making it the driest such stretch since 2018 and the second-longest in the past 12 years.IMD data showed that the last instance of double-digit rain in Shivajinagar this monsoon was on Aug 1 (30.3 mm), making it 54 days from Aug 2 to Sept 24. As the current dry run continues to be active, the 54-day count could grow further before the season ends.An expert from Vagaries of Weather blog said, “It already surpasses every comparable streak recorded between 2019 and 2025 — 33 days in 2019, just 16 in 2020, forty-two in 2021, twenty-three in 2022, thirty-five in 2023, twenty-six in 2024, and 23 in 2025. Only 2018, when Shivajinagar went 64 days without double-digit rain, saw a longer gap in the past 12 years.”The streak began after Shivajinagar last recorded double-digit rainfall on Aug 1 this year. Though the city and its surrounding areas have received occasional showers since then, the rainfall at Shivajinagar has remained below 10 mm over every 24-hour observation period.Chinchwad recorded over 104 mm rainfall in a day’s time on Sept 22, but other areas received far less on the same day — Shivajinagar recorded 7.3 mm and Lohegaon logged 13 mm. Though Shivajinagar continues to see a prolonged run without double-digit 24-hour rainfall, a similar streak has not been observed at Lohegaon or other areas of the city.The recent showers in Pune have largely been convective and localised, with rainfall varying considerably across different parts of the city and the district.IMD scientist SD Sanap said, “Aug did not see continuous rainfall. Though there were rainy days, there was no significant amount of rain. The low-pressure systems that developed moved towards West Bengal, Jharkhand and eastern Madhya Pradesh. There were no significant systems over our region. Other atmospheric circulations were also not favourable.”He said similar conditions continued in Sept, with low-pressure systems largely not moving towards the region and the monsoon trough having little impact on the city. “The same conditions continued in Sept as well. There were no favourable atmospheric conditions over the region, and the low-pressure systems did not move towards our region. El Niño is also one of the reasons,” Sanap said.Explaining the nature of the Bay of Bengal systems, he said those developing over the head or northern Bay of Bengal generally move along the Indo-Gangetic plains, providing limited benefit to Maharashtra.