Monsoon may withdraw from Maharashtra in next 24-48 hours, Pune could see early exit: IMD

Pune: The southwest monsoon is likely to start withdrawing from Maharashtra over the next 24-48 hours as rainfall activity remains subdued and dry air begins to enter the state, IMD officials said on Thursday.The timing would be close to Maharashtra’s normal withdrawal commencement date of around Oct 4-5, while Pune could see the monsoon withdraw before its normal date of Oct 9, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) official told TOI.“There is no rain forecast for Pune from Friday,” an IMD official said, adding that rainfall conditions over north Madhya Maharashtra during the next 24-48 hours would also be important in determining the withdrawal.He said there was currently no indication of a rainfall revival in parts of the state and thus withdrawal could commence during the next 24-48 hours.Explaining the conditions required for declaring monsoon withdrawal, IMD scientist SD Sanap said there were two key criteria — rainfall should remain absent for consecutive days and the prevailing southwesterly monsoon winds should weaken or show a reversal. “The main thing is rainfall. It should not rain for consecutive two to three days,” he said.Sanap said an anticyclonic circulation over Rajasthan and adjoining areas was currently helping push dry air into Maharashtra. “As an outflow of that anticyclonic circulation, dry air intrusion is happening over parts of Maharashtra. This indicates that mostly, in a large part of Maharashtra, the weather is likely to remain dry,” he said.The IMD’s Pune forecast issued on Thursday also indicated a largely dry spell ahead, with mainly cloudy conditions initially becoming partly cloudy and only a low likelihood of light rain.The emerging dry pattern could support an earlier-than-normal withdrawal from Pune, another IMD official said. He, however, indicated that greater clarity would emerge as the region approaches its normal Oct 9-10 withdrawal window.The prolonged lack of a sustained moisture surge also set the stage for the current transition towards monsoon withdrawal, with dry-air intrusion now strengthening as rainfall activity declines across the state.Independent weather expert Abhijit Modak said Maharashtra’s prolonged dry spell in Aug and Sept was not because of a complete absence of Bay of Bengal systems. “The reason was successive systems failed to maintain a favourable westward track. The broader circulation did not support sustained moisture transport into the state,” he said.The Sept climatology often favours one or two lower-latitude Bay of Bengal systems that typically move from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana towards Marathwada, Nashik and north Konkan, bringing a westward moisture surge into Maharashtra.“The systems this year followed different tracks. A system around Sept 10 moved from Odisha towards Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, while a stronger system that reached deep depression status, after bringing heavy rain to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, curved northwards towards Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh instead of continuing westwards into Maharashtra,” Modak said.