South-West monsoon poised to withdraw from more parts of country

Conditions are becoming favourable for the remnant South-West monsoon to exit large parts of East, Central, West and even peninsular India as a defiant deep depression faded out over the outer Arabian Sea.

The monsoon has exited North, North-West and parts of adjoining East India almost on schedule but was stopped on track by brewing weather systems in both the peninsular seas.

These systems, including the deep depression, has been bringing non-seasonal rain in the South delivering surpluses in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The deep depression has weakened a couple of notches into a conventional low-pressure area and this has opened the window the South-West monsoon to resume its withdrawal process.

India Met Department said on Tuesday that conditions are favourable for its withdrawal from more parts of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, remaining parts of Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, North Arabian Sea, Telangana, north interior Karnataka and Central Arabian Sea over next three days.

The last vestiges of the monsoon may linger over the southern peninsula but more in technical parlance since it would have lost its capacity to rain anymore.

The focus will now on shift to the North-East monsoon, which arrives on the back of its south-westerly counterpart and rains down its contents over Kerala, Tamil Nadu and parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

But the onset will depend on the behaviour of a strong typhoon building in the West Pacific, barrelling towards the Philippines only to turn around the corner and race towards Taiwan and Southeast China.

Its movement away from the region with south-westerly winds will be contra-indicative to the northeast monsoon and would stay as such until it makes a landfall over East Japan.

This is not expected to happen until May 20, the normal time for onset of the North-East monsoon, according to global model forecasts.

The ‘status quo’ in the Bay of Bengal will be disrupted by the end of the month by when a low-pressure area is expected to shape up over the Andaman Sea and adjoining East Bay of Bengal.

This could be the trigger for northeast monsoon to come to its own.

At least two tracker models featured by the US Climate Prediction Centre pointed towards the possibility of a ‘disruptive force’ being generated in the sea during the first week of November.

This could be in the form of a storm, likely the result of intensification of the ‘low’ in the Bay as indicated earlier.

But these are early days yet and the Bay would need to be watched closely for signals of ‘cyclogenesis. ’

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