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The southwest monsoon flows are seen to be robust enough to sustain coverage over peninsular India and onward propagation to the north along the west coast.
An India Meteorological Department (IMD) update said on Monday that the monsoon has further advanced in more parts of south Bay of Bengal, whole of Andaman Sea and parts of east-central Bay of Bengal.
The leading edge on the west coast was more or less pinned to Amindivi, Kozhikode and Kodaikanal.
Conditions are favourable for further monsoon advance over more of Arabian Sea, Tamil Nadu, central and south Bay of Bengal, Karnataka and the rest of Kerala during the next three days.
But this is perhaps the first time in 25 years or more that a prominent Bay of Bengal arm has been missing during the onset phase, says Dr Akhilesh Gupta, leading operational forecaster and Adviser to the Department of Science and Technology.
The Bay thus presents a major anomaly that needs to be examined in detail, Dr Gupta told Business Line on Monday.
TWO ‘ARMS'
The monsoon comprises the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal ‘arms,' indicating the two routes they take to run up the waters and precipitate respective onsets.
The Arabian Sea arm is the more critical of the two, and is representative of the strength of the flows generated mainly from land-sea differential in summer heating.
Traditionally, monsoon prospers in a pincer-like movement in which convection (the process of cloud-building), moisture and clouds cross the Equator first into southeast Bay of Bengal.
The Arabian Sea arm is generated from the cross-Equator migration much farther to the west off the Horn of Africa (Somalia coast) and normally takes around 10 days for the winds to shift southwesterly and hit the Kerala coast.
This has not been on view this time but, all the same, there is no doubting the onset either, Dr Gupta said. There was also no way the monsoon could have been declared without taking the Bay also into the scheme of things.
The Arabian Sea flows, however, promise nothing but the best for the crucial onset phase with periodical consolidation and orderly propagation.
This is significant given that the country has witnessed a number of occasions in the recent past when the onset phase has disintegrated with rogue weather systems (cyclones or other intense formations) diverting moisture and guiding rains away from mainland India.
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