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IF THE met department gets its predictions right, the country can expect normal rainfall during this monsoon season.

In its yearly monsoon forecast, the India Meteorological Department ( IMD) on Friday said the country was expected to have 98 per cent of the average rainfall or long period average rainfall in the year 2010 during June to September.

Technically, this prediction comes with the possibility of an error of five per cent.

The long period average rainfall for the country for the period 1941- 1990 was 89 cm.

That means India usually got 89 cm rainfall during a normal monsoon season.

Last year, the IMD had predicted 96 per cent average rainfall. But the country experienced one of the worst droughts since 1972, with a deficiency of 23 per cent.

This year, though, the situation appears to be better. Rainfall is expected to be boosted by the weakening of the El Nino phenomenon and the heat wave prevailing in northern India, officials said.

El Nino is an ocean- atmosphere phenomenon which is associated with droughts, floods and other disturbances. This means rains could shift towards the lesser or higher side of the predicted quantity.

The El Nino conditions over equatorial Pacific that remained weak during mid- June to October 2009 started strengthening from late October and peaked in the third week of December.

From late December, the El Nino conditions have started weakening.

The forecasts indicate high probability for the El Nino conditions to maintain till early part of the monsoon season and then weaken to become near neutral in the subsequent months.

A few models also indicate the development of weak La Niña conditions by July- August 2010.

La Nina conditions are the opposite of El Nino and are indicated by the cooling of sea surface temperatures.

The forecast is based on statistical models which use five parameters — north Atlantic sea surface temperature, equatorial south Indian Ocean sea surface temperature, east India mean sea level pressure, north west Europe land surface temperature and Equatorial Pacific warm water volume.

The department will update the forecast in June.

Experimental forecasts prepared by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad; National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore; Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation, Bangalore and National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, Noida have been taken into account in issuing the forecast.

98 per cent of average rainfall expected in ’ 10

96 per cent was the predicted average in ’ 09

73 per cent was the actual rainfall last year