l in April 2025 due to severe drought. Irsa had to restrict water availability to drinking needs in that month. Earlier in March 2025, the Met Office warned of drought in several districts of Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab.

Sindh’s barrages experienced a water shortfall of over 50pc at a critical stage of the early kharif season. The Sindh member in Irsa objected to the operating of two Indus link canals feeding Punjab’s Jhelum-Chenab zone when crops were thirsty in Sindh. Kharif sowing starts early in Sindh and water shortages in March and April afflict cotton, sugarcane, mangoes and vegetables, especially in lower Sindh.

The kharif season has commenced with a solid water stock, yet water availability could be hampered at a later stage due to delayed work on Tunnel-5 of the Tarbela Dam that has restricted outflow to 150,000 cusecs. Originally scheduled for June 2025, the project’s completion date has been revised to August 2027. This can compromise outflows from Tarbela in May and June.

This year, a westerly weather system brought relief-giving wet spells, raising the storage level in reservoirs. In contrast to March last year, when Tarbela and Mangla touched dead level, both dams received substantial inflows this year, demonstrating higher storage than the last five years in the corresponding period. Tarbela registered 385pc more storage than the average of the last five years.

Unexpected rains in the first week of April augmented storage by one million acre feet. The Kabul river has also supplemented the Indus flows as it registered a discharge of 56,000 cusecs in the first week of April against 18,000 cusecs last year in the same period. Sindh has witnessed unseasonal weather this month.

March was a wet month with 14pc above normal rainfall in the country. The second half of March brought with it several moderate to heavy wet spells. Balochistan saw abundant showers filling half a dozen dams in Makran, breaking a long dry spell.

Overall, Sindh received 129pc more rain in the month, followed by Balochistan (60pc) and Gilgit-Baltistan (28pc). Sindh has witnessed unseasonal weather patterns in April. Several cities broke the record for single-day rainfall in April.

On April 3, Karachi received 38.7 millimetres of rain, dwarfing the 37mm recorded on April 2, 1985. Dadu saw 23mm of rain in 24 hours, surpassing the 22mm of rain it experienced on April 14, 2017. The outlook for the April-June period shows above-normal rainfall in the country.

The north-western region of GB, KP, northern Balochistan and eastern Sindh are likely to experience a positive rain anomaly. The southern parts of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan are also expected to receive rainfall that is slightly above normal. Mercury is also expected to remain higher than normal.

Mean temperatures during the April-June period are expected to remain above normal throughout the country, with the largest deviation seen in GB, Azad Kashmir and northern KP. The temperature map also shows that all districts of Sindh are likely to endure above-normal temperatures, with Karachi showing the highest temperature anomaly. Areas of the Makran coast in Balochistan are also likely to witness very high temperatures.

Weather conditio­­ns in the highlands of GB and KP determine summer flows in the Indus and its mountainous tributaries. Temperatures in GB remained three to five degrees Celsius above normal during early February. Temperatures in the region have recorded an increase of approximately 0.6°C from 1987 to 2013.

The winter snowfall, until the end of last month, remained 30pc less than the annual average of the last two decades. Delayed and thin snow cover exposed to excessive temperatures will accelerate the pace of snow and glacial melt. This will increase the risk of glacial lake outburst floods in vulnerable valleys such as Gilgit, Hunza, Ghizar, Astore, Bunji and Chilas.

Glofs and faster snowmelt are likely to swell water flows in the Indus. It is too early to comment on the outlook for the monsoons at this stage, yet signs indicate that a wet summer with higher river flows during the monsoons can be expected. The authorities ought to take anticipatory measures for a potentially challenging monsoon this year. The writer is senior adviser on water governance at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute. naseer_memon@sdpi.org Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2026