The Hindu Business Line : Bay storm crosses coast, two more in offing

Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 6 Sunday’s depression over northwest Bay of Bengal moved westward and intensified into a deep depression and crossed the Orissa coast to the north of Paradeep early on Monday morning.

It is likely to move west-northwest across Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh over the next two days and weaken gradually.

It will combine with a brewing cyclonic circulation over northeast Arabian Sea to set off whipping rains over central and west-central India.

HEAVY RAINFALL

Widespread rainfall activity with scattered heavy to very heavy falls and isolated extremely heavy falls is likely over interior Orissa, Chhattisgarh and east Madhya Pradesh during the next 24 hours. Fairly widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy falls is also likely over coastal Orissa, north Telangana and Vidarbha.

Subsequently, the rain belt is likely to shift to West Madhya Pradesh, remaining parts of Maharashtra, Gujarat and south Rajasthan. The sea-based circulation might merge with the incoming land-based ‘low’ and head out as a single entity gradually westward and into the sea.

STRONG FLOWS

The merged entity would have cleared the way for a successor ‘low’ to form over the Bay of Bengal as early as by Thursday, as per an India Meteorological Department update. But international models seemed to stick to the original outlook for Saturday for the event to take place.

In any case, the successor system building with such great speed provides a measure of the strength of the flows.

This is despite the presence of two storms concurrently in the South China Sea, named ‘06W’ and ‘Pabuk.’

These two storms are priming for a landfall over the Vietnamese and Taiwanese coast one after the other.

Both have moved in a west-northwest direction and are seen in this manner aiding the cause of the Indian monsoon.

It should also explain why the monsoon would hold on its own and neutralise the influence of the merged circulations leaving the Gujarat coast and moving further away into the sea.

RECONVERGING FLOWS

The south-southwesterly flows are seen getting slightly disoriented from Friday, but would re-converge by Tuesday next.

All this while, the Bay would see the buzz grow louder by the day, with a freshly brewing ‘low’ expected to cross the Orissa coast by August 16.

On Monday, the axis of the rain-driving monsoon trough passes through Bikaner, Jaipur, Jhansi, Umaria, Raigarh centre of deep depression and southeastwards into east-central Bay of Bengal. The fresh ‘low’ will brew close to the tip of this end of the trough.

On the west coast, the persisting off-shore trough will cause widespread rainfall activity with scattered heavy to very heavy falls over coastal Karnataka, Konkan, Goa and Gujarat during the next four days.

The south-southwest orientation of the flows would mean that the leading edge passes to the north of Kerala.

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