Why is India seeing 95% cloud cover despite a Super El Niño?

India is witnessing an unusual weather pattern this week.

Satellite imagery from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) indicates that nearly 95 per cent of the country's landmass is covered by dense cloud.

This, despite the Pacific Ocean being gripped by an exceptionally powerful "Super El Niño" or "Godzilla El Niño" — a climate event that is typically associated with weaker monsoon rainfall and an increased risk of drought in India.

At first glance, the situation appears contradictory. Climate models have projected a below-normal southwest monsoon for 2026, while large parts of the country are currently experiencing overcast skies and widespread rainfall.

However, meteorologists say there is no contradiction. The explanation lies in the difference between large-scale climate drivers that influence weather over months and regional atmospheric systems that determine weather over days.

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Why a powerful El Niño has not stopped India from turning cloudy

The current El Niño has escalated rapidly, with sea surface temperature anomalies in the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific exceeding +2.0°C, crossing the threshold generally used to classify a Super El Niño. Climate scientists expect the event to persist into early 2027.

Under normal circumstances, such a strong El Niño alters the Walker Circulation — a vast atmospheric loop of rising and sinking air stretching across the tropical Pacific.

During normal or La Niña years, warm waters in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean promote rising warm, moisture-laden air over South Asia, supporting the Indian monsoon.

During El Niño, however, the warmest ocean waters shift eastwards towards South America. As the centre of rising air moves away from Asia, descending dry air becomes more dominant over the Indian subcontinent, suppressing cloud formation and rainfall over the course of the monsoon season.

This broader climate pattern was one of the main reasons the IMD projected the 2026 southwest monsoon at only 90-92 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA), while June ended with a cumulative rainfall deficit exceeding 20 per cent.

Yet meteorologists emphasise that El Niño influences seasonal rainfall probabilities rather than controlling daily weather.

In other words, it changes the odds over several months but does not dictate what happens over a particular week.

Regional weather is temporarily overpowering El Niño

The extensive cloud cover over India is being driven by a combination of active regional weather systems that have temporarily overridden the Pacific Ocean's drying influence.

According to the IMD, multiple upper-air cyclonic circulations have developed across the country, including over Haryana, northeast Madhya Pradesh and southwest Rajasthan.

At the same time, a well-marked upper-air cyclonic circulation over the west-central Bay of Bengal strengthened into a low-pressure area near the Odisha-West Bengal coast.

These systems are linked through the monsoon trough, which has shifted back to its normal position across the Indo-Gangetic plains after remaining unusually far north for several days.

Together, these weather systems are functioning as an enormous moisture transport mechanism, simultaneously drawing humid air from both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. The result has been widespread cloud formation across much of India, despite the background influence of El Niño.

Meteorologists describe cyclonic circulations as relatively small pockets of low pressure where air converges and rises — the same basic mechanism that powers tropical cyclones, though on a much smaller and weaker scale.

While El Niño generally discourages such systems by favouring sinking air over South Asia, it cannot prevent them from forming whenever local atmospheric conditions become favourable.

This week, those local conditions have aligned across multiple parts of the country, allowing regional weather systems to dominate the immediate weather pattern.

Heat, moisture & western disturbances add to cloud build-up

Before the overcast conditions developed, many parts of India experienced intense heating, creating localised "heat domes" across coastal and interior regions. The sharp temperature contrast generated shallow but intense low-pressure zones over land.

These pressure differences acted like atmospheric vacuums, pulling moisture inland from the warm waters of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The incoming humid air then rose rapidly, producing extensive convective cloud formation across central, northern and western India.

In northwestern India, another weather system has further enhanced rainfall.

Western Disturbances — extra-tropical weather systems moving across the upper atmosphere — have interacted with moisture-laden monsoon winds over states including Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana.

The collision between cooler upper-level air and warm tropical moisture has generated widespread cloud bands along with episodes of heavy rainfall in several areas.

The IMD's July 21 bulletin recorded very heavy rainfall ranging between 12 and 20 centimetres across parts of West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Gujarat within a single day, with forecasts indicating additional rainfall during the week.

The role of the Indian Ocean Dipole

One climate phenomenon that often helps offset El Niño's drying influence is the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which measures the temperature difference between the western Indian Ocean near Africa and the eastern Indian Ocean near Indonesia.

When the western Indian Ocean becomes significantly warmer than the eastern side — known as a positive IOD — additional moisture is transported towards India, partly compensating for El Niño's suppression of the monsoon.

This mechanism played a crucial role during the famous 1997-98 Godzilla El Niño, when a strongly positive IOD helped India avoid a far more severe drought.

However, climate models indicate that the IOD currently remains in a neutral phase. That means it is neither strengthening nor weakening the present weather pattern and is providing no large-scale oceanic support against El Niño.

Does the current rain mean the monsoon has recovered?

Meteorologists caution that widespread cloud cover should not be confused with a fully recovered monsoon.

Although the present weather has brought relief from heat and provided beneficial rainfall for standing crops in many areas, rainfall deficits are measured over the entire June-to-September monsoon season rather than over individual weeks.

A few days of widespread rain cannot erase a seasonal rainfall deficit that has accumulated over several weeks.

As the current low-pressure systems and cyclonic circulations gradually weaken, the broader influence of the Super El Niño is expected to remain in place. This means the risk of uneven rainfall distribution and seasonal rainfall deficits could continue through the remainder of the southwest monsoon.

The current spell nevertheless highlights an important feature of meteorology: global climate drivers and day-to-day weather do not always operate on the same timetable.

While El Niño shapes the seasonal background by increasing the likelihood of weaker rainfall over months, regional weather systems can temporarily overwhelm that signal for days or even weeks.

India's current blanket of cloud is therefore not evidence that the Super El Niño has completely disappeared.

With inputs from agencies