India’s monsoon arrived on schedule. Then it stopped moving. The country’s rainfall deficit has widened to 42 percent since the season began on June 4, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said, and a brewing El Niño in the Pacific threatens to make things worse.
India received just 42.1 millimeters of rain through June 18, against a normal of 72.2 millimeters. The monsoon supplies most of the country’s annual rainfall and irrigates crops from rice to cotton. A weak start puts farming, water supply and food prices at risk.
The IMD’s weekly bulletin, dated June 11, shows the shortfall building fast. For the week ending June 10, rainfall ran 26 percent below the long-period average nationwide. Central India fared worst, down 52 percent that week; the South Peninsula was the only region with a surplus.
By June 18, the gap had widened to 42 percent for the season. Central, eastern and peninsular India remain deficient or severely deficient. Only isolated pockets of northwest India and the western Himalayas have seen excess rain.
Why the Rain Won’t Move
An active western disturbance has parked the heaviest clouds over the western Himalayas, meteorologists say, while central India, Maharashtra and Gujarat sit largely cloud-free. The Arabian Sea branch of the monsoon is weak. The Bay of Bengal branch is producing only scattered thunderstorms. Upper-level winds are blocking the system’s push north.
Mumbai is having one of its driest Junes in over a decade. Its water authority suspended supply to construction sites this month — the first such move in 12 years — and cut distribution to factories, businesses and sports clubs. Swimming pools have stopped receiving water entirely.
Maharashtra has recorded severe deficits. Vidarbha and Madhya Pradesh are still waiting for the monsoon to arrive in force.
A Super El Niño May Be Forming
The stall is unfolding alongside a developing El Niño. A North American Multi-Model Ensemble forecast for late 2026 projects Pacific sea surface temperatures more than 2 degrees Celsius above normal, with some models showing anomalies above 5 degrees.
Scientists call that a “Super” El Niño — anomalies above 2 degrees Celsius in the Niño 3.4 region, compared with 1.5 to 1.9 degrees for a “Strong” event. Current projections suggest that threshold could be crossed by the end of 2026, which would rank among the strongest El Niños ever recorded. Forecasters caution that outlooks this far out carry real uncertainty.
El Niño has historically weakened the Indian monsoon and dragged down rainfall, though the link isn’t absolute.
Forecasters See No Quick Fix
“We do not currently see a signal strong enough to recover the existing deficit,” said Takahisa Nishikawa, senior decision support meteorologist at Atmospheric G2. He expects any improvement next week to be temporary, not a full reset of the season.
Fergus Keatinge, vice president at Marcus Weather Inc., pointed to the Pacific. “The developing strong El Niño is a key driver,” he said, of the risk of a weaker, more uneven monsoon. Keatinge said the dry start has already triggered new severe-dry alerts for India’s soybean and groundnut belts, and could delay planting into July.
The IMD also flagged isolated heatwave conditions over Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Vidarbha in mid-June. The country’s hottest reading on June 10 was 46.2 degrees Celsius, at Bhatinda in Punjab. For the week ahead, the IMD forecasts only a low chance of heatwave conditions in parts of northwest India.
The IMD expects conditions to turn more favorable later this week, allowing the monsoon to push into Maharashtra, West Bengal and Bihar. But without a strong low-pressure system pulling moisture in from both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, forecasters say the deficit could hold through late June — right as farmers run out of time to plant.
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