By Purushottam P. Khatri
Kathmandu, Sept. 17: Monsoon is likely to prolong till the first week of October, Meteorological Forecasting Division said on Tuesday.
Pratibha Manandhar, senior meteorologist at the MFD under the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, said that looking at the current raining patterns, it could be said that monsoon this year would end on the first week of October.
Nepal has a record of the monsoon ending on October 19 in 2013, according to Manandhar. Monsoon usually enters Nepal on June 10 and ends by September 23.
“If we look at the trend of monsoon of the last one decade, we find that in most cases the monsoon has ended on the first or second week of October. But normally monsoon in Nepal ends on September 23,” she said.
It is already mid-September, and rains have been inundating human settlements and triggering landslides. On Tuesday, heavy rains lashed an inundated Rajbiraj in Saptrai. Two days ago, seven people were killed in landslides in Rukum and other districts.
This year, monsoon made a delay arrival in Nepal on June 20. In 2018, monsoon had arrived on June 8, two days earlier from the normal time and lasted till October 5, 2018.
The country had welcomed monsoon on June 12 in 2017.