The Hindu Business Line : ‘Low’ may not do a Gonu with N-E monsoon

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 15 Sunday’s cyclonic circulation over northwest Bay of Bengal has intensified into a low pressure area and moved north-northeast to lie over North Bay of Bengal off the Bangladesh-West Bengal coast on Monday.

The `low’ is far too north to be of immediate consequence to the brewing northeast monsoon, unlike the wholesale disruption that an non-seasonal Super Typhoon Gonu caused to the southwest monsoon during a comparable phase earlier in June this year.

MARKED MOMENTUM

But torrential rains will get powered into east and northeast India for the second time after the southwest monsoon went into a withdrawal mode from the northwest onwards. The withdrawal has acquired marked momentum over the past couple of days, making deep inroads westward into the south.

On Monday, the withdrawal line passed through Forbesganj, Bankura, Angul, Jagdalpur, Ramagundam, Nizamabad, Gulbarga, Bijapur and Vengurla. More parts of Chhattisgarh, entire Vidarbha, Marathwada, Madhya Maharashtra, parts of Telangana and of north interior Karnataka, most parts of Konkan, Goa and parts of the central Arabian Sea are out of the southwest monsoon footprint now.

Mumbai and Pune, too, have seen the southwesterlies leave them dry during this eventful phase. The fast pace of withdrawal will help the easterlies shape up and blow from a largely northeast direction to set up the retreating monsoon (northeast monsoon) along the peninsular southeast.

The south Andhra Pradesh and adjoining north Tamil Nadu coasts, along with Kerala, will receive scattered rainfall over the next few days precipitated by the seasonal troughing in the Bay of Bengal. A calibrated escalation of the rains accompanied by associated thunder activity will switch on the northeast monsoon in the region.