South remains wet as Met sets up watch for ‘low’ in Bay

A helpful trough extending lately from north Madhya Maharashtra to Lakshadweep across interior Karnataka has piloted rain into parts of Central India overnight on Wednesday.

Though no heavy rainfall was reported, the spell was spread out across peninsular and adjoining Central India as well as along the West Coast.

Apart from the trough, a fresh cyclonic circulation over West-central Bay of Bengal helped anchor the spell. India Met Department expects this to settle as a low-pressure area over ‘next three-four days.’

Forecasts about further evolvement of the ‘low’ vary from one agency to the other with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts suspecting it may loiter about in the Bay for some time.

It would be made to share the southwest monsoon flows with a stronger system upstream (east) likely developing in the South China Sea.

The Bay ‘low’ and the building system in the South China Sea will both draw on the flows being masterminded by typhoon ‘Kilo’ in the northwest Pacific (off Japan).

Given this, the Bay ‘low’ may not ramp up to the strength earlier estimated; it will move laterally west from the Andhra Pradesh coast and across the central peninsula into the Arabian Sea off Konkan-Goa.

But the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction suspects that the ‘low’ could intensify as a monsoon depression in the Bay and approach the Odisha coast in a week’s time from now.

The US Centre for Climate Prediction sees above-normal rain for central peninsula during the week ending September 14 (Monday). The rain will spread to Central India during the week that follows.

Withdrawal of monsoon could remain suspended until September 21 until the rains clear out progressively from the Central India and South Peninsula.

On Wednesday, the withdrawal line remained stalled along Amritsar-Hissar-Ajmer-Barmer alignment across Punjab and Rajasthan. The Met also refrained to take call on further withdrawal from the region.

It sais that the monsoon was active over Marathwada, Rayalaseema, coastal and north interior Karnataka during the 24 hours ending Wednesday morning.

The ongoing spell has helped push the Met subdivisions of coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema, south interior Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry into ‘rainfall normal’ category.

Agency reports from New Delhi quoted Met as saying that the overall deficit has come down by two percentage points to 12 per cent on Wednesday.

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