Close on the heels of two violent storms churning up the waters to its far-west and near-east, the Bay of Bengal is now signs of fresh activity, though much lesser intensity to deserve comparison.
But that is not to rule out its rain generating capacity for many parts of North-East and East India, Central and Peninsular India, an India Met Department (IMD) update indicated.
During the past week, typhoon Hato had rammed into Hong Kong and Southern China as a category-3 storm while hurricane Harvey roared into Texas on south-west US coast as a stronger category-4 storm.
Normally, these types of powerful storms (cyclones) do not form in either of the seas in the subcontinent (Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal) during the peak of the monsoon.
Instead, sea-based weather systems of lesser intensity - low-pressure areas or depressions - take on the responsibility for transporting moisture from these seas to precipitate as rain over land.
It is in this context that the IMD forecast of a fresh low-pressure area likely developing in the Bay needs to be assessed, something that was in the making as per advance forecasts.
The 'low' would shape up by tomorrow, and two preparatory cyclonic circulations are hovering in the region, which would merge to set up the larger system.
Heavy rain forecast
The IMD forecast for anticipated rainfall from the brewing low-pressure area indicates a rather expansive area under coverage.
As for today, it has forecast heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places over Odisha; Konkan & Goa; heavy over Himachal Pradesh; Uttarakhand; Uttar Pradesh; East Rajasthan; Madhya Pradesh; Vidarbha; Chhattisgarh; Bengal; Assam & Meghalaya and the rest of the North-Eastern States; North Coastal Andhra Pradesh; Gujarat; Madhya Maharashtra: Telangana; Karnataka and Kerala.
The rain will scale up tomorrow and the day after, with heavy to very rain and isolated extremely heavy rain for Gujarat; Konkan & Goa; Saurashtra & Kutch; rest of Central India; and South Peninsula.
Meanwhile, the IMD has pointed to the presence of a core of sub-tropical westerly jet winds across Jammu, which does not augur well for further coverage of the monsoon over that region.
It remains to be seen if this would signal the process of the withdrawal of the monsoon from the North-West, which normally sets off from around September 1 (four days from now).