The Hindu Business Line : July rain deficit contained to 17.6%

New Delhi/Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 1 The end-month spurt in rains have literally saved the blushes for July, whose unusual dry run had threatened to leave behind the `next worst’ deficit after the historical low in year 2002.

Rains have been poor (17.60 per cent below average) but the shortfall is lower than July 2004 (22.94 per cent) by a comfortable margin. It is incomparably better than July 2002 when the deficit had plummeted to 49 per cent.

This time round, July rains in absolute terms have been just marginally higher than those in the preceding June (219.6 mm versus 217.1 mm), thus making for an almost equal distribution over the two months.

And indications are that the good run of the monsoon would continue into mid-August as per initial conditions of Friday. Particularly strong winds and heavy rains are possible after the second of the two forecast `low’s takes shape around August 8/9 in the Bay of Bengal.

Meanwhile, the first is `low’ is due within the next two days. An India Meteorological Department (IMD) update said that the `low’ (or cyclonic circulation) is expected to form over the west-central Bay by Sunday.

Its likely northwestward movement will bring fairly widespread rainfall over Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra with isolated heavy to very heavy falls until Wednesday. Rains are likely to perk up along the west coast from Tuesday. The enhanced rain belt may just skip Karnataka and the rest of the peninsula.

But the session will really get a leg-up with the monsoon flows strengthening around August 6 covering the Bay and the South China Sea to further east. The second `low’ would get thrown up in the Bay during this phase. The enhanced activity is in line with the outlook of the Climate Prediction Centre of the US National Weather Services.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting sees a tropical cyclone spinning up over the South China Sea around August 7. The area of `cyclogenesis’ is indicated to the northeast of the South China Sea, and the proximity to the Chinese coast may not give it the elbowroom to ramp up to typhoon strength.

This will cause the strong flows to get directed into the Bay system and help it intensify. Almost simultaneously, the entire Arabian Sea-Bay-South China Sea belt is shown to prop up one enlarged trough.

The South China System is shown to weaken, but another window would get opened within this trough, this time over the northeast Arabian Sea around Konkan-Mumbai-South Gujarat region. The Bay system would have just crossed into land over the Andhra Pradesh/Orissa coast around this time.

This will herald strong monsoon conditions, which are forecast to last into the mid-August. Unlike during the first few days of the month, southern peninsula too is expected to benefit from the wet weather piloted by the second `low.’

On Friday, the monsoon trough passed through Bikaner, Sawai Madhopur, Jabalpur, Champa, Puri, and then southeastward into the east-central Bay of Bengal, an IMD update said.