The weather department defines average, or normal, rainfall as between 96 per cent and 104 per cent of a 50-year average of 89 cm (34 inches) for the four-month season beginning in June.
The Director-General of IMD, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, said in a virtual video conference that some rice-growing states in India's east may receive below average monsoon rains.
This year, India's top rice regions - Bihar, Jharkhand and some parts of West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh states - recorded a rainfall deficit as high as 48 per cent. Due to the loss, rice planting dropped by 13 per cent so far.
Meanwhile, Rajasthan received 270 mm of rainfall in July, the highest precipitation for the month in nearly seven decades and the weather department has predicted more rains from this week.
For lower rainfall in eastern India, traders say the forecast could hit yields of the rice crop. India's summer-sown rice accounts for more than 85 per cent of the country's annual production, which jumped to a record 129.66 million tonnes in the crop year to June 2022.
In July, the overall rains were 8 per cent below average in June and 17 per cent above average in July, Mohapatra said.
But India's eastern and northeastern regions have received 45 per cent below average rainfall in the first two months of the monsoon season, the lowest in 122 years. "Rainfall is gradually becoming deficient over these regions," Mohapatra said.
Since half of India's farmland doesn't have irrigation, the monsoon accounts for about 75 per cent of India's annual rainfall.
(With agency inputs)
