Large parts of northern and eastern India are expected to be rainy this week, according to the forecast issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Monday. This follows similar weather patterns in April and May so far, suggesting that this summer season is likely to be one of the cooler ones.
The gridded data of the IMD shows that this is the 18th coolest summer since 1951, the first year for which IMD has published gridded data. However, it appears even cooler if one excludes the early part of the summer months, when temperatures are usually low in absolute terms.
For the sake of simplicity, HT considered the March-May period as the summer season. This shows that the March 1-May 10 period this year averaged a maximum temperature of 33.08°C, the 18th lowest average since 1951. This was also 0.51°C cooler than the average for these days in the 1981-2010 period, considered the normal.
However, if one excludes the first 15 days of March from the analysis, the average maximum for the March 16-May 10 period is 33.31°C, eighth lowest since 1951 and 1.16°C below normal.
Chart 1 India experiencing one of its coolest summer seasons, however, does not mean that all parts of the country have. Even in the March 16-May 10 period, only around two-thirds of the country averaged lower than normal maximum temperatures.
