The monsoon is set to maintain its momentum this week, with the Arabian Sea rustling up activity yet again after hoisting cyclone ‘Ashobaa’ earlier this month.

A low-pressure area has materialised off the Gujarat coast and is poised to intensify, threatening another round of heavy to very heavy rain over the neighbourhood.

Towards the other end, a prevailing monsoon depression has crossed the south Odisha coast and is parked over Sambalpur, spraying heavy rain all around east India.

The Met Department says the depression will start weakening during the next 24 hours, only because the ‘low’ off Gujarat will scale up.

The two form part of a single extended trough over central India; the dynamics are such that one system can hope to grow only at the cost of the other.

Global models suggest that the Bay depression now over Sambalpur would ‘blink first’ in the instant case.

Another depression?

This would allow the Arabian Sea system to intensify despite being close to the coast. In normal times, a system can hope grow to peak strength only when it is located out into the sea.

But here it would be able to grow possibly as a depression on the sheer strength of the monsoon flows, according to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

The US Climate Prediction Centre is of the view that the existing depression over Sambalpur would drive monsoon easterlies in a west-northwest direction, pushing rain into north-west India.

The Arabian Sea system will dump heavy rain over Gujarat and south-west Rajasthan, and may be guided to move across the border.

In this manner, the monsoon may manage to cover the entire Indian landmass over the next eight days.

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