Monsoon prepares to cover north interior Karnataka, Rayalaseema

The monsoon has now covered the whole of south interior Karnataka and Tami Nadu and entered parts of north interior Karnataka and Rayalaseema.

On Tuesday, the northern limit linked Ratnagiri on the West Coast with Bellary, Anantapur and Chennai elsewhere in the south peninsula with Dhubri and Gangtok in north-east India.

Cyclone Ashobaa is approaching for a landfall over the Oman coast by Wednesday evening.

This will help the monsoon flows over Arabian Sea to reorganise and resume their track towards the West Coast.

The flows would take a couple of days to consolidate; they might hit the coast from south later in the week.

This phase will also see the all-important offshore trough spread itself out along the coast.

This is an elongated area of lower pressure that serves as a receptacle for the incoming flows from where they make the final lunge towards the coast.

Formation of the trough is normally taken as a sign of monsoon health during a given time.

The trough collapses when the flows weaken; it will come back into place as the flows strengthen again.

The US Climate Prediction Centre has forecast moderate to heavy rain for the west coast for the week beginning Tuesday. The Konkan-Mumbai stretch is bracing for a fair amount of rain, as per this outlook.

The flows are forecast to hold forth during the week that follows (June 17-23) during when parts of east India too are expected to benefit. This is expected to be triggered by a weather system crossing in from the northwest Bay of Bengal and entering Gangetic West Bengal/Odisha, says an experimental tracker featured by the US forecaster.

India Met Department in its projections too seem to suggest an expansive phase of the monsoon playing out in the context of the blow-out of cyclone Ashobaa.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology had also hinted at the evolving offshore trough along the West Coast after the cyclone makes the landfall.

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