Girls on their way back home after school amid rains in Bhagalpur on Wednesday. Picture by Amit Kumar

Patna, June 15: This year, monsoon has kept its date with the state. It arrived in some eastern districts of Bihar today.

Bhagalpur, Forbesganj in Araria district and Kishanganj were the fortunate few to receive rains. While Bhagalpur recorded 5.2mm rainfall, the downpour in Forbesganj was 29.3mm. The data of Kishanganj was not available with the Met office at the time of filing this report.

People residing in other parts of the state would not have to wait for long for rains.

“The condition for advancement of monsoon in the rest of the state is favourable. The rain-bearing winds are likely to reach the rest of the state in the next three days,” Met director Animesh Chanda told The Telegraph.

Assistant professor of meteorology in Rajendra Agriculture University, Pusa, Abdul Sattar echoed Chanda as far as the presence of the favourable condition for advancement of monsoon is concerned, but he came up with a more conservative estimate about monsoon winds reaching other parts of the state.

“Monsoon would take two to seven days in reaching the other parts of Bihar,” he said.

Explaining the favourable condition on the basis of which the Met office was expecting monsoon winds to reach other parts of the state soon, Chanda said a well-marked low pressure area had developed in Bay of Bengal and it was moving in the north-west direction. “Once this low pressure area reaches Bihar, the state would receive good rainfall,” added the Met director.

The formation of low pressures in the Bay of Bengal is one of the most important factors that decide the advancement of monsoon in the northeast and north India.

The absence of this phenomenon accompanied by some other factors had proved costly for Bihar in 2009 and 2010. While the state had received 699.2mm of rainfall from June to September in 2009, the corresponding figure for 2010 was a dismal 588.9mm in these four months. In a normal monsoon year, the state receives 1024.1mm of rainfall from June to September.

“Having correctly predicted the date of arrival of monsoon in Bihar, we hope the Met department’s prediction of a normal monsoon in the state too would be correct as any deficiency in rainfall would have a direct bearing on the production of kharif crops,” a senior agriculture department official, who preferred anonymity, said.

Scanty rainfall in the past two years had adverse impact on the rice cultivation in Bihar. Its production came down to 35.14 lakh metric tonnes in 2009-10 and 35 lakh metric tonnes in 2010-11. In a normal monsoon year, the state produces over 40 lakh metric tonnes of rice, the main kharif crop cultivated in the state during rainy season.