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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, May 12 Southwesterly winds within the Bay of Bengal basin have failed to significantly pick up in strength on Tuesday but some models expected seasonal rains to reach south of the Andaman Islands by early Thursday morning.

These models suggest that extreme southeast Bay may already have started receiving the first few rains spilling over from the Gulf of Thailand and adjoining mainland Thailand to the east.

Satellite pictures showed clouds spreading into the Andaman and Nicobar Islands both from the southwest and the southeast. A massive cloud cluster lay headed right into the Bay after having crossed the equator.

Northwesterly winds from the Arabian Sea circumnavigating the peninsular tip to blow as southerlies have been preventing the easterly wind regime from penetrating into larger parts of the Bay.

But part of these southerlies straying into the eastern coast of the country continued to provide the wherewithal for the north-south trough or wind discontinuity to flourish.

The wind discontinuity (where opposing winds merge) gets thrown up as these southerlies meet up with parent northwesterlies blowing over land from the Arabian Sea.

On Tuesday, India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that the wind discontinuity ran down from Chhattisgarh to south Tamil Nadu through Telangana and Rayalaseema with an embedded cyclonic circulation over Chhattisgarh.

A counterpart west-to-east trough in westerlies lay extended from sub-Himalayan West Bengal to northwest Bay of Bengal. This trough pair has continued to fuel weather activity over the east, northeast and southeast.

The north-south trough is triggering incursion of moisture from the Bay, and is expected to cause fairly widespread rain or thundershowers accompanied with squall or hail over West Bengal, Sikkim, Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa and the North-East during the next two days.

The disturbed weather in the region has to shut out completely for the southwest monsoon to make a full-scale onset.

Meanwhile, heat wave conditions prevailed over parts of Vidarbha, Telengana and coastal Andhra Pradesh. The highest maximum temperature in the region was 45.5 degree Celsius recorded at Brahmapuri in Vidarbha.

A cyclonic circulation each in west and east Rajasthan as part of a prevailing westerly system had kept at bay the dry and hot northwesterlies. This had whittled down the intensity of the monsoon-enabler ‘heat low’ in the region.

But IMD expected the mercury to reverse the trend and reinvigorate the ‘heat low’ bringing in heat wave conditions once again from later this week. This will happen even as the offending cyclonic circulations fade away into the east.

The prevailing wind regime to the southwest of the country (Kerala coast) has lacked consistency in bearing and direction. While the preferred direction has been northwesterly to occasionally westerly, the speed is showing signs of improvement.

Three-hourly forecasts put out by a leading international model estimated that the winds would be mostly westerly along Thiruvananthapuram by early Thursday morning. Wind speeds could prevail in the range of 26 to 27 km/hour and relative humidity at 83 per cent.

Over Sri Lanka, the corresponding wind speeds could be around 31 km/hour, while being distinctly westerly to southwesterly as they blow east into the southwest Bay of Bengal. Relative humidity is estimated to be 81 per cent and cloud cover at 100 per cent.

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