Comments
Vanakkam! The winds are westerly to north-westerly and even northerly, or it’s still. Humidity is at 100 per cent. All this doesn't make things any better for Chennai this Thursday morning.
Everyone is glued to the track that a building cyclone could possibly take. For now, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) says it will be West-North-West to begin with (oriented towards the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh coasts) only to swerve away to the North.
In the circumstances, eager weather watchers could look out at the horizon and try to make some readings, the traditional way.
Reading weather
Look at the clouds and their bearing will show which way the wind is blowing in. Imagine, that on the far horizon, there is a factory producing the clouds and, like smoke from a haystack, they follow the wind.
This road indicates the wind is coming from the horizon. And because the road is straight, the wind is steady. If you see the road curve it means that the wind direction will change and the way it curves will tell you the new direction.
Meteorologists call this kind of phenomenon cloud streets. And wind direction would be of paramount importance.
Brace yourself before you read the next sentence. Any change from the currently barren westerly to north-westerly to northerly to more weather-friendly and sustained north-easterly to easterly to south-easterly wind would be crucial for Chennai and Tamil Nadu.
Partly cloudy today
The IMD outlook in the morning was for partly cloudy conditions. Going forward, however, it is forecasting fairly widespread showers for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry tomorrow and the day after (Friday and Saturday).
According to private forecaster Skymet Weather, conditions would be less hot under a cloudy sky, though humidity levels are lower than IMD predictions.
Foggy, with north-westerly winds and humidity at 82 per cent, with visibility down to 0.8 km (because of the smog?) were the morning observations by Weather.com, an IBM Business.
Temperature came in at 28 degrees Celsius (feels like 33 deg Celsius) with a day-time high of 31 degrees Celsius forecast.
WeatherBug recorded the morning temperature at 27 degrees Celsius (feels like 29 degrees Celsius) under partly cloudy conditions, winds westerly, and humidity at 77 per cent.
It, too, sees a day-time high of 31 degrees Celsius, mostly cloudy conditions with scattered thunderstorms.
As a cyclone is in the making farther out in the Bay of Bengal, the city’s weather bloggers and Twiterratti ruminated on various forecast possibilities....
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.