India’s monsoon opened 2026 badly. June rainfall came in 40 percent below normal, the steepest early-season shortfall in years. Now the India Meteorological Department (IMD) says July offers little relief: rainfall will likely stay below normal across most of the country, while temperatures climb above normal almost everywhere.
Monsoon winds pushed into three of India’s four rainfall regions by June 30, reaching more of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh. But wind coverage didn’t bring rain.
Central India suffered the worst, down 50 percent for the month. East and northeast India followed at 40 percent below normal. The southern peninsula ran 27 percent short. Northwest India, where the monsoon hasn’t fully arrived, logged a 31 percent deficit — and most of what fell there came from pre-monsoon storms, not the monsoon itself.
By June 29, 76 percent of India’s districts had recorded deficient rainfall or worse. Meghalaya fared worst among monsoon-covered states, down 76 percent. Manipur, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh each ran roughly two-thirds short.
Why the Rain Stayed Away
A strengthening El Niño is the main driver. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared El Niño’s onset on June 11 and expects it to strengthen into the winter of 2026-27. El Niño years typically suppress India’s monsoon, and IMD had already built that into its forecast.
But El Niño isn’t working alone, said Raghu Murtugudde, a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and emeritus professor at the University of Maryland. He told Down To Earth that warming patterns are reshaping wind shifts, while a pull from the Meiyu-Baiu front — a rainfall belt running from coastal China to Japan — is delaying the monsoon’s progress. “That’s why we have excess rains over the northwest and deficit over the core,” Murtugudde said.
He also pointed to a missing internal driver: weak circulation has starved the monsoon’s normal wet-dry cycle, the process that seeds new low-pressure systems every one to two weeks. Few systems have formed, so little rain has moved inland.
The seasonal picture isn’t dire yet. June normally supplies a fifth of the season’s rain, and the country’s seasonal deficit sits at 8 percent, Murtugudde said. He noted that years shifting from a La Niña winter into an El Niño summer, like this one, tend to produce the steepest early deficits — sometimes up to 15 percent.
July Won’t Turn the Tide
IMD’s July outlook, issued June 30, calls for monthly rainfall below 94 percent of the long-term average of 280.4 millimeters. Most of the country will stay dry. Exceptions include parts of Northwest and Northeast India, East-Central India and the eastern peninsula, where rain should run normal to above normal.
Heat will add to the strain. Daytime highs are expected above normal almost everywhere except a few pockets of west-central India. Nighttime lows will stay warm too, with only isolated relief in central and northeast India. IMD tied both the rain shortfall and the heat to the same strengthening El Niño, alongside neutral Indian Ocean Dipole conditions that offer no offsetting boost.
A Possible Break
There are signs of a turn. Murtugudde said the monsoon trough could get a lift from low-pressure systems forming in the Bay of Bengal and over land this week. “Now that the core zone is firing up, we should get a good pull on the trough to move forward,” he said.
Independent forecaster Navdeep Dahiya, writing on X on June 30, called it “a super crucial week for India as monsoon dynamics are finally showing up on wind patterns.” He pointed to a dual low-pressure setup — one inland, one over the Bay of Bengal — plus an established monsoon axis across north India.
IMD’s own release backed that read, noting a cyclonic circulation over the north Bay of Bengal expected to develop into a low-pressure area near the northwest Bay of Bengal around July 3.
What It Means
Farmers, water managers and power planners are watching that system closely. A weak monsoon strains irrigation timing, reservoir levels and hydropower output alike. IMD urges water conservation and contingency planning now, rather than waiting to see if July’s rain arrives. The agency will issue its outlook for August and September in late July — the next real test of whether this monsoon catches up or falls further behind.
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