Fact check: Did IMD declare onset of Southwest monsoon in a haste?

New Delhi, May 31: Skymet, India's leading weather forecasting and agriculture risk solutions company claims that India Meteorological Department's (IMD) announcement on the onset of the southwest monsoon in Kerala was a hasty declaration. But it is a claim the IMD vociferously denies.

"Declaring monsoon based on single day observations amounts to gross violation of standards, never attempted in the past," Skymet alleged, saying that any reputed scientific body can ill afford to bend rules and criteria just to prove the forecast right.

"Such a step, if taken knowingly, becomes highly objectionable and if otherwise, amounts to an illusion of knowledge," the private forecaster stated.

"Onset conditions were fulfilled only for one day, May 29. Day prior (May 28) and day later (May 30) only 40 per cent of the designated stations met the rainfall criteria," Skymet said in the statement.

Countering these allegations, IMD DG Mohapatra told a leading website that the rainfall criteria has been met for two consecutive days prior to the onset declaration.

Earlier, Skymet had forecast monsoon reaching the Kerala coast on May 26 while IMD's initial forecast was May 27.

The IMD had announced onset of monsoon over Kerala on May 29, which was three days ahead of the normal onset date.

The Southwest Monsoon set in over Kerala on Sunday, three days ahead of its usual date of June 1, marking the start of the four-month rainy season that is crucial for India's farm-based economy.

The weather office on Tuesday said that India can expect more rainfall this monsoon season than predicted earlier.

In April, the IMD had said the country would receive normal rainfall -- 99% of the long period average (LPA), which is the mean rainfall received over a 50-year-period from 1971-2020. The LPA for the entire country is 87 cm.

However, in Updated Long Range Forecast of Rainfall for the current monsoon season, India Meteorological Department Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said,''The average rainfall this monsoon season is expected to be 103% of the long period average.''

"Most parts of the country will have good and well distributed rainfall activity," Mohapatra further said.

The monsoon core zone - states ranging from Gujarat to Odisha that are dependent on rainfall for agriculture - is set to experience above normal rainfall at more than 106 per cent of the long period average, Mohapatra said.