The Hindu Business Line : Depression heads for Vidarbha

TUESDAY'S deep depression located over Jagdalpur in south Chhattisgarh moved initially westwards but later spun northwestwards to lie centred as a depression on Wednesday morning close to Chandrapur (Vidarbha).

The system is expected to bring widespread rainfall with heavy to very heavy falls at a few places in Maharashtra, Goa, and coastal and north interior Karnataka during the next 48 hours, according to a forecast by the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF).

It is further seen tracking north-northwest in time to set up an interaction with an incoming western disturbance, bringing some wet weather over northwest India for three days from Saturday.

Mumbai and Konkan will thus have been spared from another spell of heavy rain.

Assuming that the predicted track is more or less adhered to, the system will spawn welcome showers in Gujarat, west Madhya Pradesh and east Rajasthan during this period, said Dr Akhilesh Gupta, Director of NCMRWF.

It is likely to dissipate by Sunday soon after the tryst with the western disturbance.

There is going to be a lull in rain activity for at least a week thereon. September 30 is normally considered the time by which the southwest monsoon spends itself out over the mainland. But the last word has not been said yet since a westward-bound tropical storm is slowly heading towards the subcontinent from the western Pacific.

Seen tracking a similar path as the one preceding that crossed in and evolved as a cyclone over the Bay of Bengal, Tropical Storm Damrey was located near Taipei on Wednesday and is predicted to spin west into Thailand by Sunday.

Both the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC) and the Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) Group models agree with this prognosis. The system is expected to become the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane by Sunday.

There is a possibility that a remnant of this system could churn further northwest and cross the territorial waters into the Bay of Bengal by October 1 or so.

This prediction is based on the expected path the system is tracking, Dr Gupta said, and carries the risk of error since October 1 is too far away by meteorological scale.

The western Pacific concurrently hosts another tropical storm, Saola, but it was moving in the north-northwest direction and was headed for the China coast.

During the past 24 hours, fairly widespread rainfall with heavy to very heavy rainfall was reported from Telangana, coastal Karnataka, Konkan, Goa, south of Madhya Maharashtra, Marathwada, coastal Karnataka, and the North-Eastern States. Scattered light to moderate rainfall was reported from Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, interior Karnataka, coastal Andhra Pradesh, and Orissa. Mainly dry weather prevailed in northwest India.

A trough in lower tropospheric levels runs extending from centre of the prevailing depression to the North-Eastern states.

This is likely to cause scattered to fairly widespread rain over the eastern and northeast parts of the country with isolated heavy rainfall over the North-Eastern States, sub-Himalayan West Bengal, and Sikkim.

The rainfall activity over eastern parts of the country, viz. Bihar, East Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, is also likely to increase.

Isolated rain is likely over the region during next two days. With the approach of a western disturbance, the wet weather will get a further boost during the three days from Sunday.

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