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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, July 7 The land-based ‘low’ over Jharkhand hardly moved from Monday’s bearing but that did not prevent it from unleashing widespread rains over east and east-central India during the 24 hours ending Tuesday morning.

Forecast for the next two days said that isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall is likely over the North-East, West Bengal, Sikkim, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Vidarbha, Orissa and east Madhya Pradesh.

The system is expected to get a move west to adjoining central India, but the measured pace of movement may delay arrival of rains over these parts until Thursday.

Fairly widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls has been forecast over Gujarat, Madhya Maharashtra and Marathwada over the next two to three days.

The westward movement would ultimately take the system into the northeast Arabian Sea off Mumbai, where it is forecast to become a low-pressure area by this weekend or early next.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) indicated this in its outlook on Tuesday, even as the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts saw the system intensifying and moving into the open waters.

The system would take away some moisture from the flows, but a follow-up ‘low’ expected to form off the Orissa coast in the Bay of Bengal around the same time would manage to hold the monsoon in tact.

“There is no reason to doubt the overall good performance of the monsoon over central India, Maharashtra and the west coast over the next 10 days,” said Dr Akhilesh Gupta, lead operational forecaster and Adviser to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

An IMD outlook too agreed, saying that the monsoon is likely to be active over central India during the next three days. This activity is expected to shift westwards into Maharashtra and Gujarat from Thursday.

The land-based ‘low’ is causing cooler monsoon easterlies to progressively fan into northwest India. They would gradually be able to repel the westerlies and help bring down mercury levels from Wednesday onwards.

But no big precipitation is forecast for the region till such time as the ‘low’ materialises in the Bay and propels it along a west-northwest direction.

This is something to be watched out for, although forecasts indicate strengthening of the ‘low’ into a monsoon depression with a likely west-northwesterly component in the flows ensuring some gains for northwest India.

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