Tamhini rainfall has crossed 9,000 millimetres for the third consecutive year, exposing the limits of broad seasonal forecasts when rainfall is concentrated sharply across a small geographical area. The Pune region entered the year with expectations of below-average rainfall because of El Nino conditions, but the Western Ghats recorded intense precipitation, particularly in July, pushing Tamhini, Bhira, Lonavala and Mulshi above their usual seasonal levels.
The figures reported from Tamhini are notable not only because of their scale, but because of their consistency. The station recorded 9,644 mm in 2024, 9,109 mm in 2025 and 9,113 mm in the current year. This means the area has remained above the 9,000-mm mark for three successive years, even though the wider seasonal expectation pointed towards lower rainfall.
That contrast is central to understanding rainfall in Pune’s hill belt. A seasonal forecast provides a broad indication of how the monsoon may behave, but it does not mean that every sub-region will receive rainfall in the same way. The report shows how a delayed monsoon onset and subdued rainfall in June were followed by intense rainfall in July. The result was not a uniformly dry season, but a sharply uneven distribution of precipitation across months and locations.
The India Meteorological Department had forecast the possibility of below-average rainfall because the influence of El Nino was expected to continue through the season. The monsoon winds, which generally reach Pune around 10 June, arrived late this year. June rainfall was consequently below average. However, the pattern changed in July, when the Ghat areas experienced episodes resembling extreme rainfall.
Tamhini, Lonavala and Bhira recorded more than 500 mm of rain in a single day during July, according to the report. Such daily totals help explain how annual rainfall can rise rapidly even after a weak start to the season. They also show why annual averages alone are insufficient for understanding the pressure placed on roads, settlements, slopes, reservoirs and drainage systems in the Pune region.
The Western Ghats create a distinct rainfall geography. According to the figures cited in the report, Lonavala normally receives between 4,000 mm and 5,000 mm of rain annually. Tamhini’s usual annual average is between 6,000 mm and 7,000 mm, while Bhira receives around 4,000 mm to 5,000 mm and Mulshi around 2,000 mm to 3,000 mm. The reported totals are therefore substantially higher than the usual averages in several of these locations.
This variation matters for the way public agencies plan and maintain infrastructure. A road or settlement in a high-rainfall Ghat zone does not face only the challenge of total annual precipitation. It also faces the operational consequences of rain arriving in concentrated bursts. The supplied report does not provide details of specific road closures, landslides, flooding or infrastructure damage this year, so those impacts cannot be assumed. But the rainfall pattern establishes the environmental conditions within which such systems have to function.
The institutional challenge is equally important. The IMD’s long-range assessment and local observations are not contradictory simply because one indicated below-average rainfall while the other recorded an exceptionally wet Ghat season. They operate at different levels of scale and timing. A seasonal forecast describes a broad atmospheric tendency, while local rainfall is shaped by regional weather systems and the interaction between moist air and the terrain.
S. D. Sanap, a scientist at the IMD’s Pune observatory, said the effect of El Nino was visible in the rainfall pattern. June, August and September recorded lower rainfall, but July saw a sharp increase. The report also states that July rainfall was strong across the country. Normally, the monsoon winds intensify in July, making it the wettest month in many areas. This year, however, successive weather systems over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal increased rainfall during the month.
The explanation is significant because it shifts the focus from the simple question of whether a season was wet or dry. Pune’s rainfall pattern this year was defined by timing and concentration. A late start, a very wet July and lower rainfall in other months produced a season in which the annual outcome in the Ghat areas was high, even though the early-season signal had suggested the opposite.
For urban and regional planning, this creates a difficult administrative problem. Different agencies may be responsible for weather monitoring, roads, reservoirs, local settlements and land-use decisions, but the rainfall event moves across all these systems at once. The supplied material does not identify the agencies responsible for particular sites or specify any new planning response. It does, however, provide enough evidence to show why a single seasonal number cannot serve as the only planning reference for a region with such strong local variation.
The same issue applies to water management. Tamhini and the surrounding Ghat areas can receive very high rainfall, while other parts of the Pune region may experience a different distribution over the same season. The report does not provide reservoir storage figures, river-flow data or municipal water-supply information, so the consequences for Pune’s water systems cannot be quantified from the available evidence. What can be established is that rainfall availability and rainfall usability are not identical. Water arriving in intense bursts may create a different management challenge from water distributed evenly across the season.
The three-year Tamhini sequence also raises a broader question about how rainfall normals are used. The reported annual averages for Tamhini, Lonavala, Bhira and Mulshi provide a baseline, but the recent totals show that individual years can depart significantly from those levels. The current year’s 9,113 mm in Tamhini is close to the previous year’s 9,109 mm, but below the 9,644 mm recorded in 2024. That does not establish a long-term trend by itself, yet it demonstrates repeated high rainfall at the same location.
The available evidence does not establish that El Nino directly caused every local rainfall event. The IMD scientist’s explanation instead links the season’s pattern to multiple factors: the influence of El Nino, weaker rainfall in several months, the normal intensification of monsoon winds in July, and successive weather systems in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. This distinction is important because the same climate signal can coexist with episodes of very heavy rain.
For Pune, the key lesson is that rainfall risk cannot be measured only through seasonal totals or city-level averages. The most exposed areas may be those where intense rain meets steep terrain, roads, settlements and other infrastructure. The report does not document the performance of those systems during the season, but it shows why their resilience has to be assessed against short-duration extremes as well as annual rainfall.
The evidence currently confirms three facts: Tamhini has crossed 9,000 mm for three consecutive years; the Ghat region recorded rainfall above its usual averages despite an El Nino-related below-average forecast; and July was the decisive month, with intense rainfall linked by the IMD’s Pune observatory to successive weather systems. What remains unknown from the supplied material is how this concentration affected local infrastructure, water storage and settlements. Those are the next questions that any assessment of Pune’s changing rainfall risk would need to answer.