Heavy rains to continue in northeast India till Monday: IMD

livemint.com:

New Delhi: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday warned that heavy to extremely heavy rainfall will likely persist over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Meghalaya until Monday. This has been attributed to the influence of a cyclonic circulation over west Assam at lower tropospheric levels, coupled with the western end of the monsoon trough aligning along the Himalayan foothills.

East and northeast India, which has been grappling lower than normal rainfall this monsoon season so far, is expected to get light to moderate widespread rainfall, along with thunderstorms and lightning over the next five days. Rainfall in region has been 17% below normal so far in the June-September season.

Arunachal Pradesh will likely get isolated, very heavy rainfall tonight, while Assam and Meghalaya can expect similar conditions today and Monday, including extremely heavy falls tonight. In addition, light to moderate rain and thunderstorms are predicted for sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim tonight, as well as for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands between Tuesday and Wednesday.

However, the IMD has cautioned that rainfall over the next five days may not be sufficient to substantially alleviate the deficient monsoon conditions in eastern and northeastern regions. “East India as on Friday in August recorded only 1% excess rainfall, which may go back to zero by the end of this month," said Vineet Kumar Singh, a research scientist at Typhoon Research Centre of Jeju National University in South Korea and a former IMD scientist.

Meanwhile, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, the IMD directorate general, in an interview with Mint said that the remaining rainfall for August is likely to be below average. Nationwide, the rainfall deficiency for August