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Back-to-back western disturbances are now expected to enforce a “blow out” not just in the Bay of Bengal but in the contiguous South China Sea as well.
Strong westerlies fanning across the Indian subcontinent and into Southeast Asia could now delay the formation of weather systems in these seas.
The small churn in the south Bay of Bengal of Thursday will be guided north-northeast for a silent wash-over over south Myanmar coast, model runs show. Linearly to farther east, the westerlies will cause a low-pressure in the west Pacific to be blown away northeast above the Philippine archipelago to East China Sea and later into Japan.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) had hinted at the possibility of this “low” entering South China Sea to grow as a tropical cyclone.
On Thursday, updated outlook from the Climate Prediction Centre (CPC) of the US National Weather Services suggested that the west Pacific could likely witness fresh incremental churn and toss up a “low” over the weekend.
Southeast Asia and the eastern half of the Bay of Bengal are expected to witness above normal rainfall during this period.
Going forward (May 11 to 17), however, the CPC has put both the west Pacific and the Bay under watch for a tropical storm (likely tropical depression) watch.
Meanwhile, the empirical wave propagation model for predicting outgoing long wave radiation (OLR) by the CPC suggests that a weak Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave may hit southeast Arabian Sea around the beginning of June, the usual date for southwest monsoon over Kerala coast.
OLR values are negative indicating presence of clouds and correlates with a wet phase of the MJO wave that travels periodically in the upper atmosphere of the region from west to east.
The alternating dry and wet phases of the MJO have usually been associated with concomitant weather on ground above which it passes.
Wet MJO waves have usually triggered the onset of the monsoon, apart from plotting the formation of ‘low's, depressions and even cyclones during the season.
The dry version usually brings about ‘break-monsoon,' the intra-season break in rainfall and associated weather.
CPC forecasts available up to June 13 indicates that a weak wet phase of the MJO wave would be in action around June. Given this, it remains to be seen how strong the onset phase would pan out.
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