The Hindu Business Line : Monsoon relents save over coastal Andhra

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct. 31 The northeast monsoon seems to have relented after an initial burst of rains that swamped the southern Tamil Nadu first, even as the north Tamil Nadu-south coastal Andhra Pradesh belt waited until the weekend for its share of meaningful showers.

Northeast monsoon rains occur in spells of about 3-4 days duration. Spells exceeding four days are much less; at times, there have been long spells of dry weather with little or no rain.

The Bay of Bengal will now take its own time to recoup the kinetic energy lost to the first seasonal depression, remnants of which are still hovering over west-central Bay and adjoining south coastal Andhra Pradesh as a conventional ‘low.’ But the system is increasingly being sheared to the west by dry air over land.

CLOUDS STREWN OVER

Steering winds associated with the seasonal anticyclone has caused the clouds to be strewn over along the coast right up till northeast India.

India Meteorological Department has forecast thundershowers at many places over south coastal Orissa and at a few places over interior Orissa and north coastal Orissa.

Isolated rain/thundershowers are likely over West Bengal, Sikkim, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. Fairly widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls is likely over Andhra Pradesh and south coastal Orissa. Isolated thundershowers are likely over Chhattisgarh and Vidarbha.

Konkan, Goa, Madhya Maharashtra and Marathwada also stand to get some showers thanks to the presence of a cyclonic circulation over south Maharashtra-Goa-Karnataka coasts. Meanwhile, a cyclonic circulation lingers in anticipation over the South Andaman Sea.

Meanwhile, the deep depression over southeast Arabian Sea (Tropical Storm 05A) has slightly moved westwards. It is likely to intensify further as a full-fledged (named) tropical cyclone but some models say it may stop short of doing that and could dissipate over sea.

They are basing their argument over the fact that the storm is increasingly sheared (the top getting lopped off) and incursion of dry air from the Arabian Gulf coast. Others are betting on the tropical cyclone barrelling across the Oman-Yemen coasts. In any case, an eventual landfall, if any, would be much delayed than earlier thought.

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