MUMBAI: With only three days to go, the current month is set to hold the record for the lowest rainfall in June in the last decade. In fact, June 2014 could well turn out to be the third worst monsoon month if available data since 1951 is compared.

The BMC is already weighing 20% water cuts across the city as levels in lakes supplying water to Mumbai have fallen sharply and the meteorology department has predicted showers only after the first week of July. The civic body has also invited tenders for cloud-seeding.

This year, Santa Cruz has recorded a meagre 87.3mm of rainfall. So far, the lowest rainfall recorded in June in a decade was 216.4mm in 2009, the year the state suffered a major drought. Since 1951, the lowest rainfall received in the month of June was 0.6mm in 1972, followed by 82.2mm in 1995.

Last year the rains arrived dramatically in the city and the first month of the monsoon recorded total rainfall of 1,029mm. K S Hosalikar, deputy director general of meteorology at the Regional Meteorological Centre, Mumbai, said, “There has been a substantial deficiency in rainfall in the month of June for Mumbai. We are hoping it will pick up in July. We are looking at the monsoon pattern setting up in July.”

Weather officials said there were several reasons for the poor rainfall so far this year. Cyclone ‘Nanauk’, which passed through the city, reportedly took away a lot of moisture with it. Weather officials also claimed there was no formation of proper rain-giving systems like low pressures or depression.

This year, the IMD declared the onset of the monsoon in Mumbai on June 15. However, it was not followed by the advancement of the south-west monsoons for quite a few days. Surprisingly, last year the monsoon had set over the entire north-west India on June 16, about a month earlier than the normal date of July 15.