By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : The annual monsoon, bringing in much awaited rains to India, entered the Kerala coast Monday with heavy downpour across the southern state – three days ahead of schedule.
"In view of the persistent cloudiness over the Arabian Sea and adjoining peninsular India, and continued widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls for the last two days over Kerala, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declares onset of southwest Monsoon over Kerala today, the 28th May 2007," an IMD statement said.
Earlier this month, the IMD had predicted that monsoon would hit Kerala May 24, a week ahead of its normal date of June 1. This prediction was revised to May 27 following some cyclonic formations over the Bay of Bengal.
According to weather officials, several Kerala cities were receiving bountiful rains since Sunday. The meteorological department here, however, had earlier said they were just summer showers and not the monsoon.
Between Sunday morning and Monday afternoon, Thrissur received 12 cm rainfall followed by Kozhikode (10 cm), Thiruvananthapuram and Kottayam (8 cm each), Nilambur (7 cm) and Kochi (2cm).
"Conditions are favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon over some parts of coastal and south interior Karnataka and some parts of Tamil Nadu during next 48 hours," Met director K. Santhosh said.
This year, the monsoon had set in over the Andaman sea and southeast Bay of Bengal on May 10, about a week earlier than normal.
From Kerala, the monsoon travels upwards to the parched central Indian plans and is expected to bring rains to Delhi by the end of June.
The Indian capital also witnessed cloudy skies Monday afternoon as IMD officials forecast few spells of rain till Tuesday afternoon in the city.
On Monday, Delhi recorded a maximum temperature of 39.2 degrees Celsius (2 degrees below normal) and a minimum of 22.2 degrees (6 degrees below normal)