Monsoon may start withdrawing from September 28

Conditions are expected to become favourable for withdrawal of the monsoon from parts of North-West India from September 28, a delay of almost a month attributed to the ongoing late surge in rainfall.

Monsoon conditions are currently active over the region right next to where the withdrawal should normally begin from September 1. An incoming remnant of erstwhile Pacific typhoon ‘ Doksuri ’ had turned the tables on the withdrawal schedule.

Incoming circulations from westward-moving typhoons from the North-West Pacific/South China Sea are known to favourably influence the India monsoon next door to the East. And this is what has been playing out in the late-in-the-season surge.

The India Met Department (IMD) said on Friday evening that the previous day’s well-marked low-pressure area held on gamely and showed no signs of weakening.

What has been sustaining its strength is the ongoing interaction with an incoming western disturbance from the opposition direction that carries loads of moisture carried from the North Arabian Sea off Gujarat and adjoining South Pakistan.

Combined with the easterly winds blowing into the well-marked ‘low’ from the Bay of Bengal, the entire Central and North-West India is awash with moisture, which is precipitating as rain over the region.

The rain has come not a day too soon for some of the crucial planting areas, which have had a lean phase lately — for instance Uttar Pradesh, west Madhya Pradesh, east Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha.

The interaction between the western disturbance and the well-marked ‘low’ should continue to bring heavy rain to other parts of North-West India on Saturday.

The IMD has put Uttarakhand on notice with a warning for heavy rain at a few places with heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places on Saturday.

It will be heavy to isolated very heavy over west Uttar Pradesh and heavy at isolated places over Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, and east Uttar Pradesh.

Simultaneously, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands along with Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on the South-East coast should start receiving a fresh spell of rain from Saturday.

This is being attributed to latent activity in the South-East Bay of Bengal where a cyclonic circulation has materialised, downstream of an existing circulation over the Gulf of Thailand across the international waters.

The rain over North-West India should relent over the weekend and the vigorous monsoon may shift to the South Peninsula with rains growing over Tamil Nadu, and increasingly over the adjoining Met subdivisions.

Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema, and interior Tamil Nadu and Karnataka could also receive rains from the approaching circulation, which some models say will grow into a low-pressure area.

The US Climate Prediction Centre says rains would also lash the West Coast, including Konkan-Goa, Coastal Karnataka and Kerala, with the offshore trough coming back to life again during this phase.

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