Locally available lateritic soils are widely used in the construction of compacted embankments for transportation facilities in many parts of Kerala, India. In the recent past, a series of catastrophic failures were reported in lateritic soil slopes during the monsoon seasons. In the present study, performance of compacted lateritic soil embankments at the onset of rainfall infiltration was investigated. Daily precipitation data for the region for the month of June, July, and August 2018 was considered for the analysis in order to simulate extreme rainfall conditions. A fully coupled flow-deformation analysis was carried out in order to study the strength and deformation behavior of the embankment during rainwater infiltration. It was found that the rainfall infiltration resulted in the failure of embankment slopes due to tremendous changes in suction as well as degree of saturation within the unsaturated lateritic soil. Further, the influence of reinforcing the embankment using geosynthetics with internal drainage was also studied. It was observed that they are effective in ensuring the integrity of embankment even during extreme rainfall events.