Monsoon covers entire Maharashtra

India Meteorological Department stated that southwest monsoon made steady progress and has now covered the entire state of Maharashtra.

Mumbai: Four days after hitting coastal Maharashtra, the southwest monsoon made a steady progress and has now covered the entire state, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Sunday.

The progress of the monsoon has so far been normal and on the expected lines, an IMD official said. In the last 10 days, parts of Central and North Maharashtra and Vidarbha received incessant showers, IMD's Mumbai centre deputy director general K S Hosalikar said.

'The southwest monsoon covered the entire state on Sunday,' he said.'North Maharashtra and most parts of the Marathwada region face water scarcity every year. It is a good sign that these areas have received showers this year. It will help accelerate the pre-sowing activities of farmers, he said.

However, heavy showers in some urban areas, including Nashik, caused some inconvenience. Water-logging occurred at the Nashik Road police station on Saturday after heavy downpour.

'It started raining around 6 pm in our area and within a couple of hours, the Nashik Road police station was inundated. The entire staff had to make efforts to remove the water,' an official from the police station said.

In Beed district, which faced acute water shortage in last few years, received good showers in the past one week, filling up some of the dry river beds. The Chausala river bed, which was completely dry this summer, got filled up on Saturday after rains, a senior official from the state agriculture department said.

'If the current monsoon trend continues in the state, we could see early sowing,' he said. (PTI report)