The flourish with which the North-East monsoon announced arrival two days ago has seemingly dissipated with the heaviest rain being confined now to the southern parts.
The rainfall has been just about normal elsewhere, says the US Climate Prediction Centre. It doesn’t see any pick-up during the next week, with some areas expected to record less than normal rainfall.
This is being attributed to a potential low-pressure area in the south-west Arabian Sea, being pushed towards the Somali-Yemen coast by seasonal easterlies, and the ‘pull’ effect on moisture over the South.
On Monday, India Met Department tended to agree with the forecast. The ‘low’ may materialise during the next two days and straightaway intensify and become ‘well-marked.’ As per global forecasts, it could intensify further as a storm western Arabian Sea and head towards the Yemen coast.
The pull-away of moisture in this manner may dry up peninsular India from October 26, according to the US Climate Prediction Centre.
Lean Bay of Bengal Upstream Bay of Bengal, the breeding ground for rain-making systems during the North-East monsoon, too is projected to witness a lean phase during this week.
But this phase could likely end with expected churn in the Andaman Sea and generation of a likely low-pressure area there by Monday next.
An experimental forecast put out by a model of the US Climate Production Centre has been hinting at this for more than a week now. Wind flow projections put out by India Met Department also tend to support this outlook.
Andaman sea buzz But it will be quite some time before the ‘low’ can impact the east coast of India, straight to the west and the first point of contact over land, but separated by hundreds of km.
The time and distance may help it evolve into a stronger weather system, according to the US tracker model. It sees the system developing into a full-fledged storm off India’s east coast by the month-end or early November.
This is still in the realm of extended forecast and would need to be verified and validated on a daily basis, say weather watchers.
But they are unanimous in their opinion that only such an event can ensure that the North-East monsoon doesn’t lose further steam and go into an extended lull.