The Hindu Business Line : Peninsula posts staggering rain records

Thiruvananthapuram, March 28 The rogue ‘low’ in the south-east Arabian Sea and the spin-off systems that stalked the southern peninsula during the past week have returned some staggering rain records for March.

The Met sub-division of coastal Karnataka topped the charts recording rains up to 5,883 per cent above the seasonal normal for March 1-26, say statistics put out by India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Konkan-Goa ran up close behind, with 5,471 per cent each. It shared with coastal Karnataka the spoils of an active easterly wave that vented its fury through the safety valve that the ‘low’ offered.

In doing so, the causative cyclonic circulation did a roundabout trip of the peninsular tip, racing in from the equatorial Indian Ocean towards its ultimate perch in the southeast Arabian Sea.

South Interior Karnataka (excess by 1,272 per cent) and North Interior Karnataka and Telangana (1,062 per cent each) were the next big rain aggregators in that order and took up the third and fourth places. Lakshadweep accumulated 1,047 per cent above the seasonal normal.

DEFICITS FILLED

The other significant figures making up the rear were Madhya Maharashtra (+986 per cent); Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (+957 per cent); Rayalaseema (+757 per cent); Marathwada (+711 per cent); coastal Andhra Pradesh (601 per cent); and Vidarbha (+201 per cent). Significantly, these had run up huge rainfall deficits during the just concluded winter season.

Meanwhile, satellite pictures on Friday revealed the trough in the southeast and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal having organised better relative to its dishevelled self the previous day thanks to convective forcing from the east equatorial Indian Ocean (around Indonesia).

GETTING SHREDDED

But forceful westerlies were seen tugging at the cloud formation and shredding it from the west and northwest. Model forecasts suggested that the system could get twisted out of shape and stretched thin in a north-northeast direction towards the Bangladesh coast. The trough could throw up a ‘low’ in the process, and intensify before landfall.

Tamil Nadu and Kerala are shown to receive rains as the parent trough sets up a ‘low’ over the southwest Bay, close to the Tamil Nadu coast, around March 30. But the bulk of the rain from the larger system would get sprayed over the sea, before being guided towards the Bangladesh coast.

An IMD update on Friday said that the trough persisted over the southeast Bay and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal. Over land, the trough running out from Vidarbha to Kerala shifted alignment and ran down from west Madhya Pradesh to south Tamil Nadu through Madhya Maharashtra and interior Karnataka.

Another trough lay extended from sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim to North Bay of Bengal through Gangetic West Bengal. This would preside over the scattered thundershowers activity accompanied by isolated thunder squalls over the Northeastern States during the next four days.