Bad news for Commonwealth Games, MeT predicts more rains

In what appears to be further bad news for Delhi's preparations for the Commonwealth Games, the MeT department has said that heavy rains are likely to continue in northern India, including in the capital, for some more days.

In its weekly forecast, it said the western end of the monsoon is likely to oscillate north-south of its normal position leading to fairly widespread rainfall with heavy falls over Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi during the half of the week.

The rains are likely to decrease thereafter in these regions, the weather office said.

The withdrawal of the southwest monsoon normally starts from western parts of Rajasthan around September 1.

"However, in view of north-south oscillation of monsoon trough and continuation easterly flow over northwest India, the withdrawal of monsoon is not expected to commence till middle of September," the weather agency has predicted.

The city has so far received 792.4mm of rains since July five when the monsoon hit the capital. This is an excess of over 120mm of rains so far.

This month alone, the city rain guages has measured over 80mm of rains.

The authorities have blamed the rains for non-completion and extention of deadlines of Games-related projects, which were already running behind schedule.