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Pre-monsoon rains have produced what looks like an unmatched record this season, delivering excess or normal rainfall for the entire country as at April-end. For the country as a whole, the surplus rain has been estimated at 89 per cent as on Wednesday, according to statistics posted by India Met Department.
Striking feature What is even more striking is the fact that there is not a single Met division classified as ‘deficient’, ‘scanty’ or ‘no rain’. Even the most drought-prone Met divisions have received either good or exceptional rainfall.
But this has translated into bad news for farmers in the heartland of north-west and central India after unseasonal rain from February to April destroyed standing crops over large swathes.
According to observers, the advance moisture made available in this manner should help the country deal with the vicissitudes of projected below-normal rains during the monsoon season. In its first long-range forecast, India Met has assessed rains to be 93 per cent of the long-period average during the four-month season.
It sought to largely blame El Nino conditions developing in the east and equatorial Pacific, and forecast strengthening of the same gradually from June when the monsoon arrives over India’s sothwest coast.
The US Climate Prediction Centre has forecast that the Indian Ocean around Sri Lanka is showing early signs of getting active and throwing up a weather system during the week starting May 6.
An experimental storm tracker features by the US agency has maintained its forecast for what looks like a low-pressure area spinning up over southwest Bay of Bengal (east of Sri Lanka and southeast of Tamil Nadu) around May7-8.
If this were to become true, this would constitute the first pre-monsoon ‘low’ in the Bay of Bengal.
The Global Forecast System run by the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction too seems to agree with this forecast for a Bay of Bengal ‘low.’
Both the models seem to suggest a north-northeast track for the ‘low’ across the central Bay towards the Myanmar-Bangladesh coasts.
India Met Department is yet to announce its forecast for a date of onset of the monsoon over the southwest coast, but this is preceded by 10- to 12 days by its arrival over Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Earlier, expert scientist and monsoon researcher PV Joseph had told BusinessLine that he estimated that the monsoon would set in earlier by a week over the Kerala coast.
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