‘Pre-monsoon showers arrived early this year’

A couple on the bike is well-prepared as unseasonal rainfall lashes parts of Thane Friday. Rainfall was seen in Mumbai as well. (Photo: Deepak Kurkunde)

The downpour and thunderstorm that Mumbaikars woke up to on Friday have been caused by pre-monsoon showers, said director of Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) V.K. Rajeev. However, he also said that the showers arrived early this year as pre-monsoon showers usually begin between the end of March and early April.

According to information received from the Met department, all the districts of Maharashtra, including the drought-prone ones such as Aurangabad, Beed, Jalna, received moderate rainfall on Friday. This has been a respite to the people as the temperature had been rising steadily in the past few days with the mercury having touched 36 degrees Celsius on Thursday. Commenting on the unseasonal rain, Mr Rajeev said, “There had been a rapid rise in temperature in the last couple of days. This led to the absorption of moisture and thus resulted in the rainfall. The phenomenon will continue for the next 48 hours.”

Owing to the rainfall, the maximum temperature plummeted to 29 degrees Celsius.

The director of Met also lay to rest notions of climate change having caused the out-of-season rainfall by claiming that the downpour could also be a pre-monsoon shower. “Usually, the pre-monsoon showers kick in between the end of March and beginning of April. But it may have set in early this year,” Mr Rajeev said.

Agreeing with the view, Chandra Bhushan, the deputy director general of Centre for Science and Environment, an environmental body that monitors climate trends, said that climate change would result in extreme events and erratic incidents such as the rainfall that the state received on Friday. “One instance of freak rainfall cannot be linked to climate change. What climate change causes are extreme cases of rainfall like what we had seen in Chennai in December and the consecutive droughts that hit Marathwada,” said Mr Bhushan.

Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio had, in his Oscar acceptance speech on February 28, stressed on the seriousness of climate change. The speech had struck a chord with several celebrities in Bollywood who had taken to social media to express their surprise at the sudden downpour and attributed it to global warming and climate change.