-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The weather office may have jumped the gun in declaring last week's torrential rainfall in northern India as monsoon showers. Private forecasters say the devastating downpour was a freak pre-monsoon phenomenon that has been followed by dry weather. The India Meteorological Department insists that monsoon rains arrived two weeks early, but private forecaster Skymet says the claim is debatable. It says northern India will get the next...

-The Telegraph A set of numbers, portents of atmospheric changes in the skies over India, had told meteorologist Om Prakash Singh something rare was going to happen over northwest India. It was Thursday, June 13, and a supercomputer that routinely crunches out five-day forecasts had consistently predicted a confluence of two weather systems, likely to take place by the weekend and deliver copious rainfall. As Singh and his colleagues at the India Meteorological...

-The United Nations The United Nations Disaster Management Team in India is closely monitoring the situation in the north, where torrential rains have triggered floods and landslides that have reportedly killed at least 70 people and left thousands stranded. In the state of Uttarakhand, rising river levels have resulted in the collapse of buildings and bridges. Some 45 people were reportedly killed and 50 people are missing, UN spokesperson Eduardo del Buey...

-Al Jazeera   Floods triggered by rains in north of country have left 120 dead, besides stranding thousands of Hindu pilgrims. Monsoon flooding in northern India has claimed more than 120 lives, stranding thousands of people due to high water levels and landslides, officials say. torrential rain and landslides since Sunday have stranded pilgrims at four revered Hindu shrines, washed away bridges and roads and caused other damage in Uttrakhand province. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh...

-The Times of India DEHRADUN/SHIMLA: torrential rains continued to pour in bad news from north India on Tuesday, with flash floods, cloudbursts and landslips claiming 69 more lives and taking the official death toll to 131, making for the most tragic tidings of monsoon in recent years. More than 73,000 pilgrims bound for the Himalayan shrines of Kedarnath, Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri remained stranded in Uttarakhand and about 1,700 tourists were...