An emerging expansive monsoon across Central India over the next three to four days could extend up to the second week of August, says a US agency forecast.

The Climate Prediction Centre of the US National Weather Service said the monsoon would peak from August 1 (exactly a week from now) to August 8 with the Bay of Bengal entering an animated phase.

Low-pressure area

The India Met Department (IMD) too has pointed to this probability in its wind-field projections given out on Tuesday evening and sees an intensified low-pressure area materialising over the Bengal-Odisha coast by Friday.

The US agency has drawn up a scenario of a second monsoon system (likely depression) emerging from the Odisha coast five days hence and accompanied by copious rain, navigating Central India all the way west into Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch.

The system will not have weakened much at the end despite the long trek over land, says the agency. It would step out into the North Arabian Sea, graze the Karachi coast for some time, and enter the Gulf of Oman.

But according to the IMD, the Bay may be readying to go into action mode even ahead of this, by conjuring up a conventional ‘low’ as early as on Friday (July 26) over the coastal areas of Bengal.

It too is forecast to travel in a westerly direction over Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, South Rajasthan, Saurashtra and Kutch before fading out beyond the international border, driving heavy rain all along.

In the near term, as the rain belt shifts to Central India, adjoining North Peninsula and parts of North-West India on Wednesday, the intensity of the ongoing widespread rainfall over Coastal Karnataka, Konkan and Goa may reduce.

But Konkan and Goa and the larger Maharashtra might go into another strong monsoon phase next week once the first ‘low’ from the Bengal coast moves in across Central India feeding on moisture from both the Bay and the Arabian Sea.

The IMD has said that rainfall activity Central India, adjoining northern parts of Peninsular India, and also along the northern plains, may scale up from Wednesday and stay as such for four more days with peak intensity on Thursday and Friday.

Heavy rain forecast

Fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls has been forecast over Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bengal, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Goa.

The all-India rain deficit as on Tuesday was unchanged at 19 per cent from the previous day, having deteriorated from the seasonal best of 12 per cent due to weak rain realisation over the South Peninsula and almost nil over Central India.

Still, Kerala managed to cut the individual Met subdivision deficit by nearly a half to 27 per cent. No major gains accrued to Tamil Nadu, South Interior Karnataka, Telangana or the rest of the northern parts of Peninsular India.

Expected productive run of the monsoon across Central India during the rest of the week and into the next should help salvage the situation to some extent here as well.

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