Rains may reach Konkan, Goa over next 4 days

The monsoon continued to make good progress on the West Coast on Wednesday entering most parts of Coastal and South Interior Karnataka, and parts of Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra Pradesh.

Its eastern arm was relatively silent, but is expected to cover Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and part of the hills of Bengal in four days.

Back on the West Coast, this period would see the monsoon racing past Coastal Karnataka, Konkan, Goa, and Madhya Maharashtra.

Already, pre-monsoon thundershowers were reported on Wednesday from Konkan, Goa, Telangana, Rayalaseema,Vidarbha, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Jharkhand, an India Met Department (IMD) update said.

The monsoon had covered the geography up till Honavar, Tumkur and Nellore over the peninsula and across the Bay of Bengal to the North-Eastern States.

The IMD assessed that conditions are favourable for its further progress into more parts of Maharashtra, including Konkan and Goa, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh.

A low-pressure area may still be in the works off Andhra Pradesh, but a preparatory cyclonic circulation has been causing heavy rainfall from west to east.

The rains will only scale up during the rest of the week and into early next week, and possibly beyond June 15, when they would become widespread over the entire peninsula with the possible exception of parts of Tamil Nadu.

A US weather tracker hinted at the prospect of the monsoon flows tossing up a cyclonic circulation off the Mumbai and South Gujarat coast.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts too has alluded to this probability though it is not sure about the strength or intensity of this system.

The US National Centres for Environmental Prediction is more explicit here, and says that the circulation will form by Sunday and loiter around the South Gujarat-Mumbai coasts for at least three days.

Should this happen, this circulation and the ‘low’ in the Bay would feed each other and escalate the monsoon rainfall manifold. The Mumbai metropolis would be well-advised to take adequate precaution against flooding.

Heavy to very rainfall could be expected over the Konkan coast during this phase with extremely heavy rainfall at isolated places.

The IMD has already predicted such an event around June 11, when heavy to very heavy rains are forecast for Konkan, Goa, Coastal Karnataka, East Gujarat, Madhya Maharashtra, Coastal Andhra, Telangana, Interior Karnataka and Lakshadweep.