Summer has been a damp squib so far this year for many parts of the country, with annual events canceled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on top of a protracted rainy season that seemingly took an eternity to end.
Last year’s rainy season hung around for a little longer than usual as well, but at least it had the good grace to bow out officially on July 25. This year... well, those sitting on the Kanto Plain, at least, were kept waiting until Aug. 1 for the season to officially end.
With gray skies persisting through the whole of July, meteorologists were equally puzzled by the length of the 2020 rainy season. Tokyo Shimbun has noted that analysts were currently receiving much less data than usual, a consequence of the reduction in commercial flights that has been seen since the emergence of COVID-19. These planes typically monitor weather patterns in addition to ferrying human cargo and so, with less data to analyze, it became harder to track the seasonal precipitation front.