The Hindu Business Line : Monsoon ahead of time, evenly spread

Thiruvananthapuram, June 12 The south-west monsoon strode into the whole of Maharashtra and some parts of Madhya Pradesh and east Uttar Pradesh even as monsoon easterlies from the Bay of Bengal fanned into the plains of northwest India on Thursday.

WELL SPREAD

Dr Ajit Tyagi, Director-General, India Meteorological Department (IMD), cited global weather models which suggest the advance of monsoon well ahead of its normal schedule over northwest India, including Delhi.

Rainfall has been very good this year and well distributed compared to the last. Out of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions, 30 have received normal/excess rainfall this year compared to only 13 the year before.

Advance of this year’s monsoon has been much more smooth and rapid against that of the last year (2007) when it was marked by a hiatus of about one week over south peninsula, Dr Tyagi said.

It reached Mumbai on June 7 (three days ahead of schedule) and raced up north along the west coast to hit southern parts of Gujarat on June 10 (five days ahead).

The northward advance over east and central India too has aligned with the normal. West Bengal, Sikkim, Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and parts of east Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have already been covered. In the peninsula, it has covered entire Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

MONSOON TROUGH

The spread of easterlies may be the first signal that the north-northwest to south-southeast pressure gradient may be settling into place for the all-important land-based monsoon trough to nestle in.

When fully evolved, it would run down from west Rajasthan to the Head Bay of Bengal, and provide the time-tested groove for ‘low’s from the Bay to roll over into the farming heartland of the country, raining all across.

Over upstream peninsular seas, the pressure gradient (from ‘high to ‘low’) had evolved to ideal values over the past few days boosting wind speeds and hastening the progress of monsoon into the southwest and southeast coasts.

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