“The southwest monsoon will remain active over most parts of the country till August 7. Thereafter, rainfall will be mostly realised along the plains of north India,” said Mohapatra.

After recording widespread rainfall during July, particularly over south peninsular and central India regions, there could be subdued rainfall over these regions in August. This would be largely attributed to the monsoon ‘break’ phase. During this phase, the rainfall activity largely shifts to the foothills of the Himalayas, along the plains of north India.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah had on Wednesday said in Rajya Sabha that there was a seven-day advance rainfall warning issued to Kerala. Reiterating, the IMD chief said that weather warnings have been shared since July 23 with a possibility of continuous heavy rainfall over the state. The warnings also included the possibility of rainfall of over 200 mm (extremely heavy rainfall).

Since Wednesday evening, parts of Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and neighbourhood areas have experienced heavy rainfall, leading to water logging and inundation of several roads and buildings. But IMD refuted it to be an event of cloudburst.

The IMD DG further said, “There was no cloudburst in Delhi or Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday. The ‘orange’ alert was issued for Delhi weather on July 30 and July 31 warning of heavy rainfall. It is urged that the disaster management teams start taking measures when ‘orange’ alert is issued and not wait for it to be upgraded to ‘red’ alert.”

The rainfall is being attributed to the northward shifting of the monsoon trough since the past two days, thereby bringing rainfall activity closer to the plains of north India.

On the rainfall season so far, IMD officials said that northwest, east and northeast India remain rainfall deficient. This was directly reflected in the temperatures last month.

Warm nights were particularly experienced over east, northeast and central India, and these regions experienced their warmest July (with respect to minimum temperatures) since 1901.

July was the second warmest and the third warmest for northwest and south peninsular India, respectively, in 123 years, the IMD data suggested.

The entire west coast during July suffered extremely heavy rain spells with 193 events when the rainfall was over 204 mm, and 1,030 events where very heavy rainfall occurred.