MUMBAI, Oct. 11 -- After a week of relatively clear skies, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Friday officially announced the monsoon's withdrawal. As per the IMD, this year's monsoon began on May 26, its earliest onset since 1950, and ended on October 10, its earliest withdrawal since 2018. Historically, the monsoon used to retreat between October 10-15, but the past two decades have seen extremely irregular weather patterns with the earliest monsoon withdrawal on September 30, 2002, and the latest, on October 28, 2020. This rainy season, on a daily basis, the IMD's Colaba weather station logged less rain than expected, but from June 16-1 and September 24-29 the area saw an excessive amount of rain. At the Santacruz weather station, rainfall drastically surpassed the average from August to September. This season, the city experienced five episodes of heavy rainfall when weather stations crossed the 100mm mark. Every month, from May to September, logged in more rainfall than the average at both the Colaba and Santacruz weather stations. While the Santacruz weather station usually sees about 2,318.8mm of rain, this year it got 34% more rainfall totalling up to 3,112mm. Meanwhile, Colaba logged 8% more rain than its usual average of 2,094 mm. Bikram Singh, the newly appointed director of IMD Mumbai, said, "The usual date of monsoon withdrawal in Maharashtra is October 5, so there has been a deviation of one week due to disturbances but it is a common phenomenon." Despite the delay, this has been the earliest withdrawal of the monsoon since 2018, when the rains finally left the city on October 6. However, Rajesh Kapadia, author of a weather blog, said "With a little over a week remaining for Diwali, post monsoon showers are expected in the city."...