North India on course for 2nd-wettest monsoon in 50 years; rain surplus hits 37%

North India is on track to record its second-highest rainfall in half a century, with the ongoing monsoon season already surpassing most historic benchmarks and trailing only the deluge of 1988.

According to IMD data, the region has received 691.7mm of rain since June 1, around 37% above normal, and is likely to cross 750mm by the end of September. That would place it just behind the 813.5mm logged in 1988 and ahead of the 737mm recorded in 1994.

The surge follows what has been described as the wettest two-week stretch in at least 14 years.

Between August 22 and September 4, northwest India, covering states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, and parts of Rajasthan, logged 205.3mm of rain, nearly three times the seasonal norm of 73.1mm for that period.

This fortnight alone accounted for more than a third of the region’s usual four-month monsoon quota.

Back-to-back weather systems

Meteorologists attribute the exceptional spell to a rare overlap of systems.

“This period saw a rare instance of back-to-back spells of two-system interactions, that is, a ‘western disturbance’ bringing moist wind flows from regions close to the Mediterranean Sea converging with monsoon winds from the east,” IMD chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra explained.

“The first such interaction took place from Aug 23 to 27, and then another one began on Aug 29 and is expected to last till Friday,” he said.

Such twin weather events are not unknown, but experts note they are seldom observed during the peak monsoon months of July and August. Consecutive interactions of this kind, as seen in recent weeks, are considered extremely rare.

Devastation across Himachal, J&K and Punjab

The intensity of the downpour has been evident in the widespread impact. Punjab was among the hardest hit, recording 388% surplus rainfall in the first week and 454% in the second.

In the week ending September 3 alone, Haryana-Delhi-Chandigarh logged 325% excess rainfall, Himachal Pradesh 314%, west Rajasthan 285%, Jammu & Kashmir 240%, and Uttarakhand 190%.

The deluge has caused cloudbursts on the Vaishno Devi route in J&K, the worst floods in Punjab in decades, near-record Yamuna levels in Delhi, and repeated landslides in the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Data shows that north India’s rainfall surplus has leapt from 11.6% on August 22 to nearly 37% by September 4. Maintaining such high daily averages over two weeks across a region of this size is described by meteorologists as “rare.”

The extreme spell now places the 2025 monsoon among the wettest in living memory, with the potential to stand second only to 1988 in the last five decades—making this season both historically significant and devastating in impact.

(With inputs from ToI)