The southwest monsoon has completely withdrawn from entire West Bengal, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) announced on Monday, marking the official end of the rainy season in the state.
“The line of withdrawal passes through Karwar, Kalburgi, Nizamabad, Kanker, Keonjhargarh, Sagar Island and Guwahati,” the IMD said in its statement. The weather agency added that mainly dry weather will prevail across West Bengal for the next seven days.
There was no rainfall recorded in any part of the state in the 24 hours till 8.30 am on Monday, according to IMD data.
In Kolkata, the maximum temperature stood at 31 degrees Celsius and the minimum at 24 degrees Celsius, both around normal levels. The Met office forecast a partly cloudy sky in Kolkata till Tuesday morning.
Earlier, the Met office had indicated that “conditions are favourable for further withdrawal of southwest monsoon from the remaining parts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar; entire Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh and some parts of Bengal, Sikkim, Odisha and Telangana during the next 24 hours and from Northeast India during the subsequent two to three days,” according to a national bulletin issued by the IMD.
Officials were earlier non-committal on whether the monsoon would be gone from Kolkata by Monday, though weather patterns suggested an imminent retreat. Meteorologists typically consider three to four consecutive rain-free days, a drop in atmospheric moisture, and a reversal in wind direction as key markers for the end of the monsoon.
Dry northwesterly winds are now entering south Bengal, even in the lower atmosphere, a Met official in Alipore said, adding that the shift in wind flow from the Bay of Bengal to northern India signals the seasonal transition. The usual date for monsoon withdrawal from Kolkata is between October 10 and 12.
This year, the city witnessed a surplus in rainfall, with October marked by a prolonged wet spell and two days of substantial showers. A combination of weather systems over the Bay of Bengal and vigorous monsoon currents contributed to the excess precipitation, mostly in the form of thunderstorms triggered by the merging of dry northeast winds with moist winds from the Bay.
“An upper-air cyclonic circulation lies over the southwest Bay and the adjoining Tamil Nadu coast. But it does not have any impact in south Bengal,” said the Met official.
The forecast now points to dry conditions across south Bengal, including Kolkata, for the coming days.
The southwest monsoon typically begins its withdrawal from Rajasthan around September 17. This year, the process started slightly ahead of schedule but was briefly interrupted by a deep depression that formed over the Bay of Bengal and made landfall in Odisha during Dashami. The withdrawal resumed once the system weakened, culminating with the complete retreat from West Bengal on Monday.
