Rains head north-west as deficit stays at 6%

North-west India is likely to witness a calibrated increase in rainfall from early next week, according to an India Meteorological Department (IMD) outlook.

This is expected to happen as an upper air cyclonic circulation inches its way west across from east India, as per global model outlook.

CYCLONIC WHIRL

In fact, IMD has already traced an upper air cyclonic circulation, to over north Chhattisgarh and neighbourhood on Thursday evening.

A counterpart circulation persisted over Gujarat while the eastern end of the trough dipped into east-central Bay of Bengal, almost in line with the normal. The offshore trough extended south from Gujarat coast to Kerala coast, too.

The monsoon is likely to remain active over parts of central India and the Gangetic plain during the weekend, the IMD outlook said. The rain deficit for the country as a whole as on date remained at six per cent on Thursday. A weather warning said that isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur over Konkan, Goa, coastal Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh during next two days.

Isolated heavy rainfall has also been forecast over Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya, sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim on Friday.

GLOBAL FORECASTS

Seasonal forecasts put out by at least three international models surveyed by Business Line do not indicate major shortfall of rain during the latter half of the monsoon. This provides for a contrarian view to the bleak forecasts made known by the IMD a couple of days back but without specifying supportive meteorological factors.

The surveyed model forecasts include those by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts; the UK Met Office; the Tokyo Climate Centre under the Japanese Meteorological Agency; and the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate Society at Columbia University. Back home, the last 24 hours ending Thursday morning saw widespread rainfall being reported from Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Uttarakhand and the west coast.

WIDESPREAD RAIN

It was fairly widespread over Chhattisgarh, Madhya Maharashtra, Marathawada, interior Karnataka, Lakshadweep, Orissa, the North-eastern States, Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh and east Rajasthan. It was scattered over Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Sikkim, Jharkhand, west Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana.

A short-term forecast valid until Sunday said that widespread rain or thundershowers would continue to occur along the west coast and over central India.

It would be fairly widespread over the western Himalayan region, Uttar Pradesh, east India, the North-eastern States, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.

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