By late March 2026, it is reasonable to say that the case for an earlier rainy season has become a bit easier to argue, but it is still too early to say the start date is clearly early.
The key change is that the Japan Meteorological Agency's three-month outlook released on March 24, 2026 also shows a warmer-than-average pattern from April to June. That adds support to the idea that the season may progress quickly.
At the same time, cherry blossom timing should not be treated as a direct predictor of the rainy season. Early blossoms can suggest a warm spring, but the rainy season itself depends much more on the late-spring and early-summer frontal pattern, moist air flow, and the position of high pressure systems.
It is also normal for late-March rain to feel strangely similar to the rainy season. But that feeling should still be separated from an actual rainy-season judgment. A few wet, heavy days in late March are still better understood as unstable spring weather than as the start of tsuyu itself.
So the practical late-March answer is simple: the background for an earlier rainy season looks a little stronger than it did before, but the actual rainy season start still has to be judged later from one-month forecasts, weekly forecasts, and frontal behavior.
