Rainfall surplus grows to 8% even as low makes merry

With only eight days to go and a rampant low-pressure area busy doing the rounds and spreading rain over East, Central and Peninsular India and the West Coast, recorded monsoon surplus for the country as a whole has inched up to eight per cent on Tuesday (for the June 1- September 22 period).

The monsoon-driving low had washed over land and was located on Tuesday morning, and by the afternoon parked itself over North Chhattisgarh. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) expects the system to track West-North-West for two days before turning back North-East to Uttar Pradesh.

Outlook for Wednesday said heavy to very heavy rainfall with extremely heavy falls is likely over Assam, Meghalaya and East Uttar Pradesh; heavy to very heavy over West Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, hills of West Bengal, Sikkim, Gujarat, Konkan and Goa; and heavy over Uttarakhand, East Rajasthan, East Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, the North-Eastern States, Madhya Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

Anticyclone, low lock horns

The rain-driving low would toy with the building anticyclone over North-West India, a harbinger of dryness and later winter, but westerlies-north-westerlies from the former would chase the low back to East India before being forced to retreat all the way back into the Bay where it originated.

Expected to pan out over the next 10 days, the battle between the anticyclone and the low would see dryness expand over North-West India but a rainy regime offering resistance over the rest of the country. This is even as the low might reorganise in the Bay and show itself up along the Odisha coast by October 3.

Extended IMD outlook for September 27-29 sees widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls over North-East and adjoining East India. Isolated to scattered rainfall is likely over Peninsular India, the West Coast and over Islands showing how monsoon withdrawal could run into a wall.

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