Vital monsoon features crumble, signals weak phase

Global climate agencies suggest that the Indian monsoon will remain in a weak condition until mid-August, with rains favouring only fringes in the North and East as well as parts of the southern peninsula.

The US Climate Prediction Centre and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts are in agreement here, despite an India Met Department (IMD) alert about a low-pressure area over the Bay of Bengal.

The IMD doesn’t seem to count much, given the unfriendly coordinates of the ‘low’ — half-over-water and half-over-land over south Bangladesh — though it will bounce back into India and move across the Bengal-Bihar-Uttar Pradesh belt.

Some heavy rains also are in order along these areas with the expected arrival of a western disturbance from the opposite side and interaction over Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and the neighbourhood.

The country’s North-East, East and north-west stand to benefit directly from the low, but not Central India. A varying wet spell is also forecast for parts of the rain-deficit southern peninsula.

A similar outlook is valid for the two coasts, though the rain may not be sufficient to fill the gaping deficit in Kerala and Karnataka.

The weak credentials of the monsoon are written large all over — the all-important monsoon trough in the North split into two, the offshore trough along the west coast all but having disappeared.

Add to this, the likely barrage of barren westerly winds across the landscape into the next week. It will now take a resurgent flow from the South to get the essential monsoon features back in the reckoning.

The European Centre sees the monsoon flows in good shape though for the time being — only, they are headed in the wrong direction, away from mainland India.

They are feeding into typhoon ‘Noru’ and tropical storm ‘Nalgae’ in the North-West Pacific, though their influence on the Indian monsoon will start to weaken from Saturday.

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