Country's only private weather forecasting agency, Skymet on Thursday said that monsoon rains in India are expected to be below normal in 2019 and probability of El Nino is 50-60 percent.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, GP Sharma, president of metrology & climate change, said, "El Nino probability is on the rise now. According to our earlier projection, it was reaching the peak in the month of December and early January and thereafter, the projections were likely to decline and it did decline also. Then from the last week of February and almost the entire March so far, it is on the rise."

Speaking about delayed and deficient monsoon, Sharma said, "Normally El Nino is linked with the poor performance of the monsoon. Around 80 percent of the cases are like that and 60 percent go to droughts also. The only difference this time is this is an evolving El Nino. Normally, the evolving El Ninos are more punishing in terms of the monsoon than devolving ones. They could be a little soft, but then definitely there is a chance that they could lead to below normal monsoon. Since the El Nino conditions are there, they will remain till the onset of the monsoon. So the start is going to be a little slow."

First Published:Mar 28, 2019 6:07 PM IST