Winter 2025: District wise Rainfall in India

In the just concluded 2025 Winter Season (January 1 2025 to February 28 2025), as per India Meteorological Department (IMD), India received 47% below Normal Rainfall (it was 33% below normal in winter 2024 [i], it was 45% below normal in winter 2023 [ii], 44% above normal rainfall in winter 2022 [iii] and 32% below normal rainfall in winter 2021 [iv]). This is coming on top of 8% above normal in SW Monsoon 2024 and 3% below normal rainfall in Post Monsoon season 2024 [v].

The Normal rainfall in this two-month Winter season is supposed to be quite low at 39.8 mm, but the actual rainfall was 20.9 mm in winter 2025.

However, the figures of actual rainfall are possibly an underestimation to the extent that they do not fully include the snowfall figures. This is a major lacuna in IMD reporting rainfall figures from snowfall areas of Himalayan states. Reporting these figures on regular basis is also useful in understanding how the snowfall figures are changing. These can also help in some cases for assessing the possibility of avalanches. Currently SASE (Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment), now part of DGRE (Defence Geoinformatics Research Establishment) is supposed to be monitoring snowfall and avalanche possibilities, but all that information is not in public domain, though it needs to be as this is basic information necessary for all concerned.

In this report we are giving detailed state wise and district wise figures of the rainfall for the 2024 winter season as reported by IMD. As can be seen from the IMD’s bar chart for winter 2025, the rainfall throughout the season remained well below the normal figure, in spite of a spike on Feb 21 and 28.

STATEWISE RAINFALL As we can see from the map below, out of 36 states and Union Territories (UTs) of India, none had Large Excess, 4 (Ladakh, Sikkim, Lakshdweep, Andaman-Nicobar) had Excess, 4 (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry) had Normal, 9 had deficient, 16 had Large Deficient rainfall and 3 (Gujarat, Goa, Diu-Daman-Dadra-Nagarhaveli) had NO RAIN. Dadra & Nagar Haveli on western coast had NO RAIN in 2021-2024 too. Sikkim had the highest rainfall (147.2 mm), at 45 % above normal rainfall of 101.4 mm. Andaman-Nicobar had the highest surplus % at 56.

SUB DIVISION WISE RAINFALL As can be seen from the IMD map below, out of 36 meteorological sub divisions of India, None had large excess, 2 (Lakshadweep and Andaman-Nicobar) had Excess, 5 (Rayalseema, Coastal Karnataka, Tamil Nadu & Puducherry, Sub Himalayan W Bengal-Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh) had normal, 8 had deficient, 16 had Large Deficient and 5 had NO RAIN.

RIVER BASIN WISE RAINFALL As in the past, IMD also reports river basin wise rainfall as we can see in the map below. These figures, however, remain unreliable as in case of large number of river basins, IMD is reporting NO RAIN, which is unlikely and in contradiction with the state and region wise rainfall. In case of some basins, it reports NO DATA! It again shows callous attitude of IMD on this issue.