The Hindu Business Line : Monsoon puts withdrawal on backburner

Thiruvananthapuram, Sept. 16 The southwest monsoon seems to have put its withdrawal schedule on the backburner as it dug in yet again on the southeast and southwest flanks.

Saturday’s low-pressure area over west-central Bay of Bengal has since weakened into an upper air cyclonic circulation off the Andhra Pradesh coast but was still capable of pumping in rain over coastal Andhra Pradesh for three more days.

A north-south trough extending from the system has been running down to south Tamil Nadu along the east coast. This has brought scattered to fairly widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls over coastal areas of south Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

WIDESPREAD RAIN

According to India Meteorological Department (IMD), the current meteorological analysis suggests scattered to fairly widespread rainfall over remaining parts of south peninsula, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep during the same period.

On the west coast, the offshore trough running from north Maharashtra coast to Lakshadweep area shifted alignment on Sunday to Maharashtra coast-to-Kerala coast. This will gradually lead to flows getting further organised to throw up a ‘low’ over the northeast Arabian Sea, close to south Gujarat and north Konkan.

Mumbai and adjoining west Maharashtra will come in for some pounding from the system. The wet cover will extend to north peninsular and central India and affect Marathawada, Vidarbha, Telengana, Rayalaseema and north coastal Tamil Nadu over the next 15 days.

MAY CLIMB NORTH

The latter part of this period will also see the rain belt taking a steep northward climb apparently at the instance of a southward-dipping western disturbance from a higher latitude. Remnants of the Arabian Sea ‘low’ might just set up an interaction with the system to drive rain to cover west Madhya Pradesh, southeast Rajasthan, west Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Punjab, in that order.

Of the two peninsular seas, the Bay of Bengal has raised itself to an ‘excited state’ and will mostly remain as such through the rest of the season ending on September 30. There is a constant feed from the South China Sea and the contiguous west Pacific, with Typhoon ‘Nari’ aiming to hit South Korea on Sunday.

CASCADING IMPACT

There is another typhoon in the making in the Philippine Sea, which weather models indicate would take west-northwest coast to slam into the China coast. Suitably directed as they are from a monsoon point of view, these systems are expected to have a cascading impact on the Bay of Bengal to the west.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) are both suggesting that wet to very wet conditions may be returning to the west coast and adjoining central India.

An IMD outlook said on Sunday that rain/thundershowers are likely at a few places over Konkan, Goa and Madhya Maharashtra and isolated over Marathawada during the next two days and may scale up thereafter. Rain/thundershowers are likely at a few places over Chhattisgarh and Vidarbha.

Going forward, fairly widespread rainfall activity with isolated heavy fall is likely over the south peninsula, Maharashtra, Goa, the Northeastern States and adjoining east India.

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