Good news ahead - the current spell of an active monsoon looks to have brought rainfall deficiency in Bihar to the recovery path this month.

June had sorely disappointed Bihar as the state received little over half the expected rainfall for the month. Residents were left waiting and farmers were worried about their crops. Alarmed, the state government held a meeting on June 30 where chief minister Nitish Kumar directed his officials to make preparations for floods or drought.

But monsoon became active since the beginning of July, bringing down the deficiency percentage in overall rainfall to 34 from 43 per cent less than normal on June 29. Since the night of June 30, several parts received widespread rainfall and the showers have continued till Monday. Two districts even received more than normal rainfall for the period between June 1 and July 3.

The Met department has said the current spell of active monsoon will stay at least a week with possibility of variation in rain.

"Going by the current observations, most parts of the state would receive good rainfall up to Wednesday," Patna Met office scientist Anand Shankar told The Telegraph on Monday. "The intensity of rain may become less but the possibility of a lull is not visible before July 9."

A lull period in the monsoon season is common when a given place witnesses dry weather. It takes place as the monsoon winds move in the form of current which leaves possibility for a gap of a few days between one current and the other.

The current weather conditions have become favourable in Bihar, giving weathermen the confidence to forecast good rainfall for Bihar. "While the monsoon trough line is passing through the state, a cyclonic circulation over Gangetic Bengal and Jharkhand has helped in moisture incursion from the Bay of Bengal to the entire state of Bihar. This has allowed good rainfall in the past three-four days and also in the development of conditions that are likely to be conducive to good rainfall in the coming few days as well," said Shankar.

Sandeep Kumar, a meteorologist in the Patna office, said the rainfall deficiency percentage was likely to witness a drastic reduction in the coming week.

The optimism does not seem out of place, as for the first time since the start of the monsoon season, Saran and Jehanabad witnessed more than the normal rainfall till July 3. Samastipur district too has recorded almost normal rainfall till now.

All this is good news for paddy cultivation as farming is gaining pace now.

The state government has set a target of paddy sowing in 3,4,44,800 hectares of land. Till June 29 only 77,000 hectares of land were sowed, while the figure jumped in the past five days with 1.36 lakh hectare sowed till Monday.

"We are hoping to witness a major jump in the area sowed by July 15 when the work would gain pace in all the districts," said an official in the agriculture department.