A renewed spell of monsoon rainfall progressing from South-East to north-west India has washed out two percentage points of the deficit over the past couple of days.
An India Meteorological Department (IMD) update on Tuesday evening said that the deficit now stands reduced to four per cent.
‘LOW' ACTIVE
This came about on a day when outlook on the dynamics of an existing land-based low-pressure area that guides the proceedings over central and adjoining northwest India suggested that it could grow in intensity over the next day or two.
The IMD located the ‘low' to over west Madhya Pradesh and adjoining east Rajasthan on Tuesday evening.
What seems to be aiding its intensification is the merger overnight of an existing upper air cyclonic circulation over west Rajasthan with itself.
Additionally, the combined system has the backing of a persisting western disturbance over Jammu and Kashmir and adjoining north Pakistan, which acts as a sentinel system located to the northwest border.
MONSOON TROUGH
The axis of the land-based monsoon trough extended from Barmer before being directed into the centre of ‘low' and onward through Allahabad, Daltonganj and Kolkata before dipping into east-central Bay of Bengal.
The western end of this trough was located to the south of its normal position whereas eastern end was near to the normal.
The alignment and the bearing are sufficient to keep the trough active with the embedded ‘low' and a cyclonic circulation over Jharkhand during the next three days.
The IMD said that scattered rain or thundershowers would break out over northwest India during the next two days and scale up thereafter.
Meanwhile, the offshore trough ran down from Gujarat coast to Karnataka coast.
SATELLITE PICTURE
A Kalpana-1 satellite imagery on Tuesday afternoon showed convective (rain-bearing) clouds rising over parts of south Rajasthan and Gujarat to the west and northwest of the country.
To the east, these clouds were spotted over east Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, east and northeast India, north coastal Andhra Pradesh, north and adjoining central Bay of Bengal, north Andaman Sea.
The clouds hung heavy also over northeast and southeast Arabian Sea, the IMD said.
A weather warning valid for the next two days said that heavy to very heavy rainfall is likely at a few places over Gujarat state and south Rajasthan and isolated heavy to very heavy over Gangetic West Bengal.
RAINS FOR NW
Isolated heavy rainfall would occur over west Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura on Wednesday.