Today is the tail end of a weather window that has kept large parts of India cooler and wetter than expected for early April. The India Meteorological Department's all-India weather bulletin for April 9 makes this clear: from tomorrow, conditions are likely to turn dry, and temperatures will start climbing 2 to 3 degrees Celsius over the following days. Enjoy the relative respite while it lasts.
IMD's bulletin for today shows heavy rainfall expected at isolated places over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya. Northeast India — particularly Meghalaya and Tripura — is under a thunderstorm and hailstorm alert today. Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha can expect scattered light to moderate rainfall, thunderstorms, lightning and gusty winds reaching 60 to 70 km per hour in some pockets, gusting to 80 km per hour at isolated places. Coastal Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu face "hot and humid weather" warnings. Delhi-NCR this morning has temperatures around 20°C, with partial cloud cover. By afternoon, the city will see 29 to 31°C with some humidity.
Also Read: Two Western Disturbances to Impact North India This Week; Hailstorms Expected
A fresh Western Disturbance is expected to affect the Western Himalayan Region from April 11 onward. This will bring another round of rain and snow to higher altitudes in Jammu-Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. For the plains — Punjab, Haryana, Delhi — it offers limited relief.
The bigger weather story, though, is not today. It is the season ahead. IMD's April-June 2026 seasonal outlook — released last week — says above-normal heatwave days are likely over many parts of coastal Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh, and isolated regions of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka during April. Night-time temperatures across most of the country will also be above normal. This combination — hot days AND warm nights — is medically significant. The human body needs nighttime cooling to recover from daytime heat. When nights stay warm, the body carries cumulative heat stress. Hospitals see more cases. Mortality among the elderly and outdoor workers climbs.
Skymet, India's private weather forecasting agency, released its monsoon forecast earlier this month. The verdict was sobering. The Southwest Monsoon of 2026 is projected to be below normal — around 94 percent of the Long Period Average of 868.6 mm. The spread is 90 to 95 percent of LPA, which classifies as "below normal." The reason is El Niño. After a year and a half of La Niña conditions, the Pacific Ocean is shifting toward El Niño. Skymet Managing Director Jatin Singh said that El Niño is expected to develop during the early phase of the monsoon season and keep growing stronger through the year. El Niño weakens monsoon winds, reduces rainfall, and dries out land — a pattern India knows all too well from past drought years.
Skymet puts the probability breakdown like this: 40 percent chance of below-normal monsoon, 30 percent chance of drought conditions, 20 percent chance of normal rainfall, and just 10 percent chance of above-normal rains. That's a 70 percent combined probability that the 2026 monsoon disappoints in some way. For a country where over 50 percent of agricultural land still depends on rain rather than irrigation, this is not a statistic to dismiss. Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Central India are specifically mentioned as likely to see below-normal rainfall, particularly in August and September. If the monsoon does fail, food inflation will follow. And food inflation in India is never just an economic problem — it's a political one too.