The South-West monsoon on Wednesday withdrew from the border areas of Kutch in Gujarat and parts of the North Arabian Sea, most of west Rajasthan and the adjoining interior in Punjab and Haryana.
The India Met Department (IMD) officially notified the start of the withdrawal process from the border areas in the West and North-West almost a month behind schedule after being delayed by intermittent rains over the North-West.
Wet weather in the SouthThe IMD assessed that the moisture content in the air over these areas has drastically reduced, giving way to largely dry weather over the past few days. The withdrawal line passed through Amritsar, Hissar, Jodhpur, and Naliya on Wednesday.
Over the next three days, the monsoon should exit the remaining parts of west Rajasthan and Punjab; some parts of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and east Rajasthan; and some more parts of Gujarat and the North Arabian Sea.
But these dry and drab conditions were in dire contrast to what obtained to the East and South of the country, with satellite pictures showing a considerable build-up of clouds in the Arabian Sea (off the West Coast) and in the Bay of Bengal.
Thunderclouds had spread out over the all of Peninsular India, East and East-Central India.
On Wednesday, the heaviest of them hung over Bihar, Jharkhand, parts of Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, west Maharashtra and Karnataka.
This is being attributed to a couple of circulations in the Bay of Bengal, one of which has entered the coast over North Coastal Andhra Pradesh and adjoining south Odisha, and the other located over the East Central Bay of Bengal.
They have combined to set up two rain-driving atmospheric features that extended onto land and further into the Arabian Sea. One, a trough, ran down from the circulation over North Coastal Andhra Pradesh to north Kerala. It cut through Rayalaseema and South Interior Karnataka. Overseeing this, is a shear zone of monsoon turbulence that ran along the latitude connecting North Interior Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
Rain for KarnatakaThe IMD has forecast heavy to very rain for Coastal and South Interior Karnataka on Wednesday while it will be heavy over Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, North Interior Karnataka and north Kerala.
On Thursday, heavy rain has been forecast for Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rayalaseema, Karnataka, Kerala and also for Odisha, Konkan & Goa, and the North-Eastern States.
Meanwhile, a US weather tracker forecast the possibility of stormy weather along and off Konkan-Mumbai and the South Gujarat coast around October 10.