Comments
The deep depression over East-central Bay of Bengal is on a slow grind but has dispensed with its north-northeasterly track that would have taken it to Myanmar.
It is now heading briefly to the North, ahead of competing the U-turn that would posit it for a landfall over the eastern coast of India along the North Andhra Pradesh-South Odisha coast.
The India Met Department (IMD) has already issued a high wind alert along the Odisha and Bengal coasts from October 27 (Thursday) and asked fishermen to return from high seas.
Timeline revised The deep depression would initially move north-northwestwards and later northwestwards, representing an arc that spans the seas off Gangetic West Bengal and adjoining Odisha.
It is expected to intensify into a cyclonic storm within the next 24 hours, the IMD said on Monday. The timeline for intensification has undergone a series of extensions over the past couple of days.
On Monday afternoon, the system was located to 540 km north-northeast of Port Blair and 320 km west-southwest of Yangon, Myamar. These coordinates more or less confirm its incremental movement towards the Indian coast.
Meanwhile, the withdrawal process of the prevailing South-West monsoon from the South Peninsula has been halted in view of the southwesterly flows triggered by the deep depression.
Follow-up system? The IMD said that the withdrawal could resume only after the would-be cyclonic storm dissipates over the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coasts. But even this looks uncertain if model outlook is any indication.
As of Monday, the date of landfall for this system is likely to be October 27/28, if not later. Barely can the flows settle over the Bay of Bengal before a follow-up systern would be triggered from the extreme south-east.
Given this, it would not be until October-end or early November that the South-West monsoon can sign off and the North-east monsoon can settle in, says the US National Centre for Environmental Prediction.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts agrees saying that it might take as many days for the deep-depression-turned cyclone to spend itself out along the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coasts.
Deficient rainfall The US Climate Prediction corroborates it further by suggesting that the entire South Peninsula would witness deficient rainfall during the week ending October 30.
The situation may change slightly for the better during the week that follows (October 31 to November 6), that too only for Coastal Karnataka, Kerala and southern parts of Tamil Nadu.
The northern half of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra Pradesh may continue to witness less-than-normal rainfall during this week as well, the US agency said.
A storm tracker of the US Centre sees plenty of weather action for the Andhra-Odisha coast during early November. It would not be until the second week of November that a fully-loaded rain-head gets directed towards the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh coasts.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.