Fresh spell of thundershowers breaks out over southern and eastern parts

A trough has come to life over equatorial Indian Ocean and adjoining south Andaman Sea in what is a precursor to formation of a pre-monsoon low-pressure area in the Bay of Bengal.

An experimental storm tracker featured by the US Climate Prediction Centre has been hinting at the possibility of the ‘low’ taking shape over southeast Bay of Bengal and adjoining Andaman Sea.

The ‘low’ is expected to intensify one round, and move in a north-northeast direction towards the Myanmar-Bangladesh coast, the US-based forecaster says.

Meanwhile, a part of thunderclouds hanging over southeast Indian Ocean has found its way into the trough, with another is moving towards Sri Lanka and south Kerala and adjoining Tamil Nadu.

The rest has drifted towards the east coast of India extending from Tamil Nadu right up towards Gangetic West Bengal and the rest of east India.

This happened under the overwhelming influence of a land-based trough that extended from the plains of West Bengal to the southeast right down up to the Comorin region.

On Friday, it cut across interior Odisha, south Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Rayalaseema, bringing all these regions under the footprint of lightning and thundershowers.

The US national forecaster had pointed to another pre-monsoon rain peak over Kerala during the week. Thiruvananthapuram saw a fresh spell of thundershowers on Friday evening.

An India Met Department outlook for the next four days suggested the following:

Saturday: Heavy rainfall at isolated places over south interior Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

Thunderstorms accompanied by squall/hail would stalk the east of the country including places such as Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Sikkim, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.

Meanwhile, a fresh western disturbance is expected to drift into the western Himalayas from April 30 and trigger rain/thundershowers over the hills and the adjoining plains.

The eastward-bound wave could dip over northeast India and ignite a fresh round of violent weather in rain/thundershowers accompanies by squally conditions.

Peninsular India is also expected to witness thundery weather during the period. This will go to further add to the rainfall surpluses recorded thus far during the pre-monsoon season.