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The monsoon covered Madhya Maharashtra, east Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, most parts of west Madhya Pradesh, east Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday.
It has already covered Jammu & Kashmir and parts of west Uttar Pradesh as rains pushed in from the Bay of Bengal.
Normal scheduleThe monsoon continues to be delayed in Gujarat by more than a week; on Wednesday, it has entered its border with neighbouring west Madhya Pradesh.
But the thrust from the Bay has taken it to parts of west Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh around the normal onset date.
It is this context that its coverage during the last week of June assumes significance. The normal schedule suggests that the national coverage is complete as rain pushes past Rajasthan by July 15.
Forecasts put out by global models indicate that this could happen even ahead, which would mean that the eight day drag from a delayed onset over Kerala will have been more than made up.
Likely ‘low’Crucial to this scenario is the assumption that a helpful weather system would form in the Bay of Bengal over the next few days to blow in even more monsoon easterlies into North-West India.
A familiar storm tracker featured by the US Climate Prediction Centre maintains that such a system would drop anchor over the ‘Head Bay’ (around Kolkata), the sweet spot for monsoon systems.
The US agency suggested that the system (which is expected to grow into a low-pressure area) would form over the next four days. From here, it is forecast to travel in a west-northwest direction along the plains in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh before heading into Rajasthan.
This makes for a copy-book style propagation of the monsoon from the Bay of Bengal into the farming heartland over East and North-West India.
The India Met Department appears to concur with this outlook. A preliminary circulation has already formed in the Bay, located on Wednesday off north Tamil Nadu and south Andhra Pradesh.
The system is expected to drive the monsoon to a fresh peak during the week beginning on Wednesday. The rains will now be concentrated over East, Central and North-West India.
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