Kolkata: Monsoon 2026 has brought bumper showers to Kolkata and most other parts of south Bengal despite a raging El Nino, which has been linked to a 13% rain deficit across the country.The monsoon is yet to withdraw from Bengal, but the city has already logged 1,718.9mm of rain between June and Sept, making it the second rainiest in the past decade. The Met office expects the weather to remain mostly dry over the next few days.Climatologically, Kolkata should receive a seasonal rainfall of 1,345.5mm by the end of Sept. With 1,718.9mm of rain, the city has registered a 28% surplus rainfall, beating the El Nino trend.El Nino is an unusual warming of the sea water in Pacific Ocean, which weakens the monsoon flow in the Indian sub-continent and leads to below average rainfall.The last time in the past decade Kolkata received higher rainfall than this year was 2021, when it recorded 1,769.8mm of rain. Last year, the city recorded 1,659.2mm of monsoon rain.Met scientists attributed this year’s rain bounty to the formation of facilitating weather systems, such as low-pressure areas over Bay of Bengal, at regular intervals. The systems helped keep the monsoon flow active on most days. The last such system, a deep depression, triggered five consecutive days of rain.“We had several weather systems over Bay of Bengal that influenced the volume and pattern of rainfall in Kolkata and most other parts of south Bengal this monsoon. Thanks to those systems, most coastal belts have logged a rain surplus,” said HR Biswas, head of Regional Meteorological Centre Kolkata.Southwest monsoon arrived in the city on June 12, within the normal onset period. Apart from a slight deficit in July, all four monsoon months registered a rain surplus.The first monsoon month started on a high note, with Kolkata registering 364.6 mm of rain compared with the monthly average of 282.9 mm. July, considered the city’s rainiest month, ended with a slight deficit of 340.8 mm, compared with the monthly average of 387.4 mm.Aug, the second rainiest month, logged 424.4 mm of rain, against an average of 364 mm. Monsoon activity peaked in Sept, which recorded 589.2 mm of rain — the highest among all four months — compared with the monthly average of 311 mm.This Sept, the city experienced rain on 20 days. On Sept 2, the Alipore Met office recorded 123 mm of downpour.Biswas, of the Alipore Met office, said Bengal will remain out of the zone of influence of a depression that is affecting parts of Myanmar and northeast India. “We can expect mostly dry weather for now, with the possibility of only scattered and isolated rain. The monsoon normally withdraws from our region between the first and second week of Oct. It has started withdrawing from parts of northwest India,” he said.
