Monsoon pushes past Mumbai; Bay arm reaches Kolkata

Two weeks after it set in, the progress of the monsoon has been mostly on par, with rains having reached well beyond Mumbai on the West Coast and into Kolkata over East India.

On Monday, the northern limit linked Valsad (South Gujarat) with Nasik, Parbhani, Adilabad, Narsapur, Paradip, Digha, Kolkata and Krishnanagar, cutting across Central Maharashtra, Telangana, Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Bengal.

The slight lag seen over Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha may be due to the unprecedented ‘theatrics’ witnessed through Sunday night over the Bay of Bengal, which saw a conventional low-pressure area pump itself up to storm strength during Sunday night.

A deep depression, next only to a tropical cyclone in strength, was generated, but died as abruptly it had evolved, as it slammed the Bangladesh coast early Monday morning.

It carried the heavy rain belt away from India in the process. The deep depression had not weakened even after 12 hours after landfall, and hovered over Bangladesh into the evening.

The India Met Department (IMD) had put it under watch for strenghening as a depression, and had apparently expected it to cross coast and turn towards India.

In fact, no weather model had forecast this scale of intensification, since it is rare for systems beyond depression to take birth in the Bay or the Arabian Sea once the monsoon has established itself.

But the outlook from a few centres, including the US National Centres for Environmental Predictions, had pointed towards a ‘flare-up’ during the weekend around the Bengal-Bangladesh coast.

In view of this, the North-Eastern States are expected to come under heavy to very heavy rainfall with isolated extreme rainfall events during the next couple of days, an IMD bulletin warned.

Squally winds speeding up to 40 km/hr are being forecast for Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura on Tuesday. The heavy rain will spread to Sikkim, the hills of Bengal, and Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday.

The Bengal and North Odisha coasts have been warned of squally winds of up to 60 km/hr gusting to 70 km/hr with rough seas around. Fishermen have been asked not to venture out.

Meanwhile, an extended outlook from the IMD said above-normal rainfall is very likely along the West Coast and would likely progress northward and to the adjoining regions during the week ending June 16.

The rains would lash Konkan, Goa, Madhya Maharashtra, Marathawada, South Gujarat and also over Bengal in the East, eastern parts of Jharkhand and Bihar, coastal and adjoining central parts of Odisha, Andhra, Telangana and South Chhattisgarh.

During June 16 to 22, above-normal rainfall activity is forecast for the North-Eastern States, Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar in the East and Konkan, Goa and adjoining regions over the West Coast. The rest of the country may witness below-normal rainfall.

Meanwhile, a reliable US weather tracker as also the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts looked to the Bay for signs for a fresh ‘low’ in a week’s time.

This could help reorganise the monsoon flows in the Bay and train a bulk of them to head back into East India.

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