Satellite pictures this (Friday) noon showed a huge bank of clouds over Maldives and adjoining Lakshadweep along with a band of strong south-westerly winds and looking to hit the Kerala and Karnataka coasts.

An advance streak of the clouds had reached the Kerala coast between Kannur and Kozhikode and extended into Mysuru, Bengaluru and adjoining Rayalaseema/Telangana.

To the South, small parcels of clouds hung over the stretch between Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram, with intermittent showers being reported at many places. The build-up is being attributed to the presence of a helpful cyclonic circulation persisting over Lakshadweep and the adjoining South-East Arabian Sea off Kerala, with clouds massing up first over the Maldives to the South-West.

 

Rains for East, North-East

Alongside, a cyclonic circulation has sustained over Bangladesh and adjoining plains of Bengal in India, which is capable of whipping in moist southerly to south-westerly winds from the Bay of Bengal. This would trigger fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls over East and North-East India during the next five days, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) update said.

Listen to the weather forecast

Fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls is also forecast over Odisha, West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura until tomorrow (Saturday) and over Konkan, Goa and Madhya Pradesh during the next 4-5 days. Light to moderate isolated/scattered rainfall over North-West India is set to increase from Saturday.

Early advantage lost

As July, considered the rainiest of the four monsoon months enters its final week, the monsoon has been able to sustain a surplus of six per cent (see data visualisation). Its best phase till date has been in June when the surplus was at a peak around 30 per cent thanks to rainfall conjured up by Cyclone Nisarga that chose to careen along the West Coast rather than spin away to the outer seas.

As per IMD data available for rain till date (June 1-July 23), 27 States have received normal to excess rainfall while only 10 nurse varying deficits. In the South, Kerala is the lone State with a deficit (-26 per cent) while in Central India, the Union Territories of Dada & Nagar Haveli (-40 per cent) and Daman & Diu (-25 per cent) join the list. North-West India too shows some deficit, especially in the hilly areas.

Deficit persists in N-W India

So we have the States of Jammu & Kashmir (-55 per cent), Himachal Pradesh (-34 per cent) and the Union Territory of Ladakh (-53 per cent) in the deficit category while the desert Rajasthan (-24 per cent) is the latest to join the list. In the North-East, Nagaland (-20 per cent), Manipur (-45 per cent) and Mizoram (-33 per cent) have been in deficit right from the word go, like the States in the North-West.

Extended range outlook by the IMD for the rest of July said that the South-East Peninsula (States of Tamil Nadu, most parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh) may receive above normal rainfall while it would be below normal over the West Coast (Kerala, Coastal Karnataka and West Maharashtra) and East-Central India (Odisha, Chhattisgarh and most of Madhya Pradesh).

However, North-East India, East India and adjoining eastern parts of North-West India (the North-Eastern States, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and East Rajasthan) could witness above normal rainfall during this phase and normal for West Rajasthan while the below normal rainfall could continue to hold over the hilly regions across Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, and Himachal Pradesh.

 

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