Monsoon sets in over Andaman Sea

The South-West monsoon has set in over most parts of the Andaman Sea and some parts of south-east Bay of Bengal, its first port of call, on Sunday.

Announcing this, India Met Department assessed that conditions were favourable for further advance of the seasonal rain over remaining parts of the Andaman Sea over the next two days.

The Arabian Sea arm of the monsoon will normally take 10 to 12 days more to push itself past Sri Lanka before hitting the mainland along the Kerala coast.

More parts of south-east Bay and some parts of adjoining south-west and east-central Bay would slip under the footprint of rain clouds during this period.

On Sunday, the south-westerly monsoon winds blowing into the Bay from across the Equator were converging around an upper air cyclonic circulation.

This circulation would have to wind down to lower levels of the atmosphere in order for the winds to accelerate and deepen the system into a low-pressure area.

The Met said that the circulation would keep moving to the north-east towards Myanmar coast over the next thee days.

A Taiwanese storm tracker has put it under watch for intensification as does the US National Centres of Environmental Prediction.

But formation of a full-blow storm is being ruled out just yet thanks mainly to a barrage of opposing winds from an incoming western disturbance.

On Sunday, the westerly system had parked itself across the lofty reaches of North Pakistan and adjoining Jammu and Kashmir.

It will keep moving into an east-northeast direction towards the Himalayas with accompanying winds blowing into the north-western plains of India and beyond.

Global agencies also saw the possibility of distracting circulations spinning up to both the west and east of Sri Lanka even as the Bay system sought to drop anchor and intensify.

A third could show up over south-central Arabian Sea which models expect may veer away northwest and wash over the Gulf of Eden (between Yemen and the Horn of Africa).

The odd model saw this system flaring up one last time in this narrow band of seawater despite being squeezed between dry surfaces to either side.

Meanwhile on Sunday, heat wave conditions were located wrongly for this time of the year to Bihar, Gangetic West Bengal and Odisha.

This is because dust storms stalking Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi are blowing away the heat from the plains of the northwest where it should reside normally.

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