Patna Women’s College students walk through rain on Tuesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, July 19: The skies opened up this morning after a fortnight-long dry spell, giving relief to the citizens gasping in humid conditions.

Weathermen attributed the morning downpour to the development of a temporary monsoon system in the region.

“For the past 15 days, the temperature in the city was considerably high. It led to warming of the atmosphere. This, in turn, created cumulonimbus clouds (dark thunderstorm clouds), which led to the rainfall. A shift in wind circulation from Uttar Pradesh to Bihar helped the cause. The depth of this circulation is around 3.1km above sea-level,” C.S. Patil, a meteorological scientist at Patna Met department, said.

A moderate rain of 13mm was recorded in the city till evening. There was shower in some other districts, including Purnea (2mm) and Bhagalpur (traces). Patil forecasted moderate rains at several places in Bihar in the next 42 hours.

Met officials said there had been a northward movement of the monsoon trough line in the past two days. At present, it is hovering over Bikaner, Churu, Gorakhpur, Gaya, Santiniketan, north-east Bay of Bengal and coastal Bangladesh.

Abdul Sattar, an assistant professor of meteorology at Rajendra Agriculture University (RAU), acknowledged the movement of the trough line but insisted that the lull in the monsoon till existed.

“Although the trough line is slightly shifting towards north, causing localised and light rainfall, the temporary lull in monsoon is still there. The overall situation would significantly improve only when the trough line would reach the foothills of Himalayas. In the meantime, medium to heavy rainfall is likely to occur in the Terai region and north-eastern Bihar,” Sattar said.

The lull in monsoon over the past fortnight has raised the spectre of a third consecutive drought though weather experts have sought to allay fears by arguing that there is still time for the rainfall deficiency to be made up.

The monsoon had arrived on time last month and the rainfall in the first few weeks had been encouraging for a state that had reeled from back-to-back droughts in 2009 and 2010. The rainfall, however, subsided towards the beginning of July following which Bihar has been in the grip of a hot and dry spell. Weathermen said it was unlikely that the situation would improve within the next 10 days over the major parts of the state.

Agricultural experts compared today’s rainfall with “nectar from heaven”. “This rainfall has subdued the ongoing adversities in the growth of kharif crops. The seeds sowed 10-15 days ago would have lush green growth because of this precipitation. The rainfall is also favourable for transplanting seedlings because enough water is required during the transplantation process,” Anil Kumar Jha, an agriculture expert, said.