The South-West monsoon has resumed withdrawal from north-west India after passing western disturbance and associated showery weather halted its progress briefly.
The line withdrawal passes through Amritsar, Hissar, Jaipur, Deesa and Naliya, an India Met Department update said on Friday afternoon.
Isolated rain has been reported from Jammu and Kashmir until this morning. International weather models had indicated this possibility from last week.
These models continue to suggest that the isolated rain would persist over Jammu and Kashmir into the first week of October.
No rain is indicated for other parts of most parts of the rest of the country except coastal Karnataka, Kerala and contiguous south Tamil Nadu, and, to a lesser extent, coastal Andhra Pradesh, during this period.
The Met Department said that conditions are favourable for withdrawal of the monsoon from more parts of northwest and some more parts of central India during the weekend.
Dry, cool winds The seasonal anti-cyclonic winds indicating dry and progressively cool weather may be setting over the northwest, west and central parts of the country.
The only exception is the extreme north and the peninsular south for reasons that are obvious. Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka would receive varying amounts of rainfall into the weekend.
Towards the South, these winds from the withdrawing monsoon are turning north-easterly to easterly. But they would resume blowing as westerlies after the rain in the South lifts.
This would happen as a cyclonic circulation responsible for this wet spell moves away and out towards the open southwest Arabian Sea and pick up in strength.
N-E monsoon signal? During the last 24 hours ending this morning, the South-West monsoon was active over south interior Karnataka, the Met Department said. Parts of Kerala also received moderate to heavy showers.
Meanwhile, the Global Forecast System model of the US National Centre for Environmental Prediction sees a storm in the South China Sea sending in a rain wave into southeast Bay of Bengal in the next 12 days.
This could likely herald the onset of the North-East monsoon in the southeast Bay. The rain wave is shown as concentrating into a low-pressure area, even a depression/cyclone and head towards Odisha coast.
These are early days, but the projections seem to indicate that the North-East monsoon could arrive in during the normal onset window of October 15-20.