Rains confined to N-W, East India

An expected low-pressure area failed to materialise over East India but a preparatory cyclonic circulation is anchoring monsoon easterlies from the Bay of Bengal into the region.

It is in turn interacting with prevailing westerlies from the opposite side, triggering rainfall at a number of places over Himachal Pradesh in the North-West and over East and North-East India.

Thunderstorms hovered over Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, West Uttar Pradesh and West Madhya Pradesh even as the causative cyclonic circulation is seen moving slowly into Uttar Pradesh and Delhi over the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, the East Coast from Andhra Pradesh to South Tamil Nadu has been brought under the cover of a helpful trough (an elongated low-pressure area), bringing rain to parts of the region.

An India Met Department (IMD) update said that thunderstorms developed over a stretch from Coastal Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

An evening satellite picture showed clouds hanging over Ooty, Erode, Salem, Thiruvannamalai, Vellore, Kumbakonam and Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, Mysuru in Karnataka, and Kollam in Kerala.

Clouds were also spotted over Hyderabad, Kothagudem, Khammam and Warangal in Telangana, Eluru and Peddipalam in Coastal Andhra Pradesh, and a number of places in Odisha.

The enhanced activity over the East Coast of India and adjoining East India is generally associated with a weak phase of the monsoon. Normally, during an active monsoon, an offshore trough develops off the West Coast to anchor the rains.

Meanwhile, an IMD outlook suggests that a strong low-pressure area/depression forming over land over North India could signal a revival of the monsoon in another week’s time. The system is shown as evolving over East India and travelling across Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan, bringing the whole of Central India and North-West India under a renewed spell of heavy to very heavy rain.

The ‘low’/depression would also likely bring heavy rain to the West Coast, though the intensity of the rain would reduce towards the South over Coastal Karnataka and Kerala.

The US Climate Prediction Centre sees heavy along the entire stretch of the West Coast, while East and North-East India may share the spoils over the northern half of the country.

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