The Hindu Business Line : Active Pacific seen sparing monsoon flows to India

Thiruvananthapuram, July 5 Landfall of a South China Sea (extreme west Pacific) storm, named Toraji, over the Chinese coast late on Thursday should remove a major distraction for monsoon flows aiming to reach the Indian landmass.

There are two more tropical disturbances dotting the vast expanse of the West Pacific concurrently, one of which is expected to grow into a major typhoon next week. But this is predicted to drift into a north-northwest course, skirting the South China Sea whose waters lap up against those of the Bay of Bengal to further west.

Any storm heading northeast from the west Pacific and slipping into the South China Sea will have direct adverse implications for the prevailing Indian monsoon thanks to the monsoon flows getting distracted and redirected, said Dr K.J. Ramesh of the Department of Science and Technology.

Tropical Storm Toraji has already had one stint over land on the island of Hainan, but it slipped back into the sea and is heading for a second landfall over mainland China. It is pretty much expected this time of year that a tropical storm in this area tracks northwestward or northwards in the South China Sea, says Mr Jim Andrews of AccuWeather.com.

Going by the predictions of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the bigger typhoon system evolving in the west Pacific too should leave monsoon flows into India largely unaffected.

NO TYPHOON EFFECT

The flows thus held back within the Bay of Bengal basin are seen setting up a tropical disturbance and possibly a ‘low’ to its immediate north.

Meanwhile, theIndia Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Thursday that the previous day’s depression over the Bangladesh coast had moved to the northwest and crossed into India to lie centred in the vicinity of Kolkata. The system is likely to move slowly in a west-northwest direction.

This will prolong the widespread rainfall with scattered heavy to very heavy falls and isolated extremely heavy fall over Gangetic West Bengal, north Orissa and Jharkhand until Friday at least. Isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall is also likely over south Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and east Uttar Pradesh during the next two days.

MTC DEVELOPING?

To the west of the country, the existing ‘low’ (remnant of erstwhile depression ‘04B’) has now weakened as an upper air cyclonic circulation over east Rajasthan and neighbourhood. It can still cause widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall over east and southwest Rajasthan during next two days.

But model predictions suggest that a mid-troposphere cyclonic (MTC) circulation is likely to form in the higher levels over northeast Arabian Sea and adjoining Gujarat, Saurastra and Kutch area around Sunday. Feared for its sheer rain-driving capacity and endurance, the MTC has been in the making for sometime in this region identified as the ‘most fertile’.

Remnant circulations of ‘04B’ and immediate predecessor ‘03B’ may have set the platform for the MTC to develop. This threatens to bring flooding rains back into Gujarat, Konkan and Goa (including Mumbai) and madhya Maharashtra.

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