India's four-month monsoon season has entered its withdrawal phase from West Rajasthan, closing out a season marked by a slow start, a mid-season recovery, and a lingering all-India rainfall shortfall.

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• The IMD said the southwest monsoon withdrew from parts of West Rajasthan on 19 September 2026, two days after the normal withdrawal date of 17 September.
• The monsoon had made onset over Kerala on 4 June and covered the entire country by 9 July 2026.
• Between 4 June and 19 September, India recorded a cumulative rainfall deficit of 15 per cent, according to IMD data.
• The Southern Peninsula recorded the largest shortfall, with rainfall 29 per cent below normal for the season so far.
• June recorded just 106.8 mm of rainfall against the normal 165 mm, a deficit of about 35 per cent, making it the weakest start to the season.
• July was the only month during the season to record above-normal rainfall, at 283.3 mm against a normal of 280.5 mm.
• August recorded 213.3 mm of rainfall, the seventh-lowest August rainfall for India since 2001.
• By 23 September, the monsoon had further withdrawn from most of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, all of Delhi, and parts of Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
• The IMD's newer climatology now sets the normal withdrawal date from northwest India at 17 September, revised from an older operational normal of 1 September.
• IMD research shows the monsoon season has lengthened by about 1.6 days per decade between 1971 and 2020, driven mainly by progressively later withdrawal dates.
• Withdrawal is determined not just by the absence of rainfall but by a combination of rainfall cessation, lower-tropospheric anticyclonic circulation, and reduced atmospheric moisture.
• A separate low-pressure system over the Bay of Bengal was expected to intensify into a depression around 21-22 September, bringing rainfall to Odisha, Gangetic West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Sikkim and coastal Andhra Pradesh even as the monsoon retreated from the northwest.