The Hindu Business Line : North-East monsoon shuts itself out, for now

A surprisingly inactive Bay of Bengal is engaging the attention of forecasters, prompting at least some of them to wonder if the northeast monsoon has shut itself out at least temporarily.

"Rains of the northeast monsoon seem to have taken leave of southern India, save southern Tamil Nadu and nearby eastern Sri Lanka. No widespread rain is indicated for areas near and northward from Chennai," is how Mr Jim Andrews of AccuWeather.com put it.

STEER CLEAR

Dr Akhilesh Gupta of the Department of Science and Technology seemed to concur, saying that the rains have steered clear of northern Tamil Nadu and south coastal Andhra Pradesh. There is no sign either of the situation getting reversed in the next four to five days.

But two evolving climatic features could help put the buzz back into the Bay by early December. The first one is the southward movement of the seasonal anti-cyclone, with its core of south easterlies to the right flank.

Apart from helping lower mercury levels in the north, the anti-cyclone is thus seen aiding the easterly wind regime over the Bay in due course.

The second feature is a tropical storm developing in the western Pacific, which is expected to intensify and travel as far-east to the South China Sea. Forecast to reach typhoon status, it is seen making a landfall over Indochina by December 2.

The system is currently far away and beyond the limits of most forecasting models, but expectations are that the system re-emerges over the Bay to the immediate west. According to Dr Gupta, the Bay would by then have prepared itself to host a migrant circulation with the anti-cyclone moving in tandem.

`CHAOTIC' SEA

Meanwhile, Mr Jim Andrews described the situation in the Arabian Sea as chaotic with reams of clouds extending from the Horn of Africa to the southwest coast of India. He did not rule out chances of a possible depression/cyclone emerging out of this.

But Dr Gupta begged to differ, saying November cyclones are very rare in the Arabian Sea. He attributed the cloudiness to the periodically accentuating global band of `low' packing the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone.

The rain bands are mostly located out in the open seas, and only some of them would move to the east to hit Kerala and Karnataka coasts. Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh would have to wait for the next buzz from the Bay.

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