Monsoon can never be too soon

Once the skies become overcast and squally thundershowers throw normal life out of gear at this time of the year, most people can be forgiven for thinking the monsoon has arrived. Only the weather mavens know better, and call it “pre-monsoon”.

Not that most know the difference, but the Met department and private weather forecasters do, and obstinately refuse to prematurely herald its arrival, no matter how much the downpour. Then one day, they finally declare that the monsoon is here.

The key, as is helpfully revealed every year but apparently forgotten by most, lies in the shape and size of cloud formations and the timing of the showers, not the quantity of precipitation — always bafflingly recorded only in millimeters.

Those towering vaporous grey behemoths seen in the afternoons and early evenings of hot and muggy days are pre-monsoon thunderheads that unleash torrents in a single shot and then whiz away. The real monsoon clouds are not as tall, spread much wider and cause prolonged and repeated spells of rain usually beginning late at night and continuing the next day, which also results in consistently lower temperatures.

Such distinctions are just for the experts. Most others, already weary of the long scorching summer, would rather just echo Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s succinct words, “Ah monsoon, never too soon.”