_______ Monsoon winds blow in Maharashtra from June to September.

Question

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Correct — option (3), South west. The wind system that brings Maharashtra its rainy season between June and September is the south-west monsoon, the same current that floods most of peninsular and northern India with moisture in this window. It forms when the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone shifts north over the Indian subcontinent in early summer, drawing in moisture-laden air from the southern Indian Ocean; that air crosses the equator, is deflected to its right by the Coriolis force in the northern hemisphere, and arrives over the Arabian Sea and the west coast of India as a wind blowing from the south-west. For Maharashtra specifically, this arm of the monsoon — the Arabian Sea branch — strikes the Konkan coast first, typically around 10 June, and is forced upward by the near-vertical wall of the Western Ghats (the Sahyadri), producing the heaviest rainfall of the state along that coastal and windward belt, before the air descends and dries out on the leeward, rain-shadow side of the Ghats further east. The state's entire kharif agricultural calendar, and the timing of festivals and school terms alike, is built around this June-to-September south-west monsoon window, which is why the direction is such a basic and frequently tested fact in Maharashtra-focused geography papers.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Not a recognised monsoon current over India. The two Indian monsoon systems are named for the direction the wind blows FROM: the south-west monsoon (June–September, the rainy season) and the north-east monsoon (October–December, the retreating or winter monsoon that brings rain chiefly to Tamil Nadu's Coromandel coast). 'South east' does not correspond to either current and is not the direction associated with Maharashtra's June–September rains.  (b) This confuses the direction of arrival with something close to its opposite. Moisture-bearing summer winds over Maharashtra blow in from the south-west, off the Arabian Sea; a north-west wind is instead associated with the dry, dusty conditions of the pre-monsoon hot-weather season (March–May) in parts of north-west and central India, not with the June–September rains this question asks about.  (d) This names the wrong monsoon. The north-east monsoon is real, but it is the winter, retreating phase that blows from October to December (chiefly November–December), driven by cold, dry continental air moving off the Asian landmass and picking up moisture only over the Bay of Bengal to water Tamil Nadu and coastal Andhra Pradesh. It is not active in June–September, and Maharashtra receives very little rainfall from it in any season.

Concept: India experiences two monsoon systems in a year, named for the direction the wind blows from: the south-west monsoon (roughly June to September) and the north-east monsoon (roughly October to December). The south-west monsoon itself splits into two branches on reaching India — the Arabian Sea branch, which strikes the west coast and is the one responsible for Maharashtra's rains, and the Bay of Bengal branch, which curves up through the north-east and sweeps west across the Indo-Gangetic plain. Maharashtra's rainfall is therefore almost entirely a south-west monsoon, Arabian Sea branch phenomenon, arriving from the sea to the state's west.

State PCS 2025 Q22 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q22 — Geography PYQ with Answer