Arabian Sea may churn into life quicker than Bay

Even as India Meteorological Department (IMD) has traced an upper air cyclonic circulation over North Bay of Bengal on Friday afternoon, the fountain of activity is seen shifting to the Arabian Sea.

Super typhoon Songda has wound down to a storm of Category-4 strength still buffeted by winds of destructive strength but away from land. It is expected to weaken further over the next two days.

Almost simultaneously, monsoon winds are shown to gather strength on this side of the Pacific, initiating a churn in the Arabian Sea.

In line with predictions by a couple of global models over the past few days, latest IMD wind map plottings also seem to indicate a weather system taking shape in west-central Arabian Sea, tracking away from mainland India towards Oman coast.

But a short-term forecast by IMD valid until Monday said that fairly widespread rain or thundershowers would occur over Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, south and coastal Karnataka and Kerala until Monday.

It would be scattered over rest peninsular India outside Telangana where it would be isolated.

Intensity of rainfall would increase over Lakshadweep, south and coastal Karnataka and Kerala during next three days.

The west-central Arabian Sea system, however, is not forecast to gain in intensity, and would in fact leave the southeast Arabian Sea (close to Kerala coast) warm and ripe enough to host a circulation - which too was being indicated by the global models (mainly Roundy-Albany and the Taiwanese Central Weather Bureau).

In this manner, the onset phase of the monsoon is likely to witness the formation of two weather systems in the Arabian Sea, one after the other.

Unlike forecasts to the contrary, the onset phase is shown to be systematic and linearly progressional, with the rains managing to cover the entire landmass, except the northwest, as early as by June 12.

This would be mostly underwritten by the weather system forming in the southeast Arabian Sea coupled with a delayed response from the Bay of Bengal into the first week of the monsoon, a projection from the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction said.

Meanwhile, an IMD update for the last 24 hours ending Friday morning said widespread rainfall was reported from Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh as a western disturbance came on its own in the region.

It was fairly widespread over Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Jharkhand; scattered over Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gangetic West Bengal, and Orissa; and isolated over Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

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