Chennai Weather: What to expect today (Friday, October 25)

Vanakkam!

The rains are keeping away from Chennai, at least for another day on Friday.

It would appear the North-East monsoon is flattering to deceive the city. It is forecast to be cloudy today (Friday) as well, with little prospect of any rain.

One cannot but recall the Tamil proverb, ' Akala irunthl nikaḷa uṟavu, kiṭṭavantal muṭṭap pakai ' ('if separated by a long distance, there will be long-lived friendship, but if they are near each other, there will be perfect hatred.'

One hopes and wishes that not only does the distance reduce, but that the mutual hatred also dies with it!

Winds indifferent

So what do the winds (and, pray, not the stars!) foretell? Not much, if wind directions for the morning and the rest of the day are anything to go by.

Winds will continue to be south-westerly in the morning hours - and so slight (at an average 5 km/hr) that a Nowcast by the Chennai Met Office (India Met Department) suspects it would amount to a virtual calm.

This, across a region where rain-friendly north-easterlies should be!

So what gives? Generally cloudy and sweaty conditions, with humidity having peaked to as high as 100 per cent early in the morning, and only slightly less later into the day.

Totally saturated with water vapour when the air can't possibly hold more! But expected to come down in intensity as the day wears on, and with that, any possibility of helpful showers.

The wind-less morning might make for unbearable weather conditions for Chennaiites.

Private forecaster Skymet Weather cannot agree more. It says the temperature will vary between 27 deg Celsius and 34 deg Celsius through most of the day, with hardly any rain.

This is exactly like conditions through the day yesterday (Thursday), which made leading weather blogger @ChennaiRains muse....

Or, for that matter, international forecaster AccuWeather, in its forecast for much of the day today...

A regional forecast issued by the Chennai Met Office has predicted fairly widespread rainfall over the rest of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry today, with heavy rain expected to lash isolated places.

After all, the westerly-to-south-westerly from the Arabian Sea would bring its own supply of moisture for interior Kerala and adjoining Tamil Nadu, but which would drain out by the time it reaches Chennai.

The causative well-marked low-pressure over the Bay of Bengal, has weakened, after drifting away to North Coastal Andhra Pradesh and South Odisha coast.

Its weakening should open out the window for weather-friendly easterly/north-easterly/south-easterly winds from the Bay of Bengal from tomorrow (Saturday) and the day after (Sunday), as windy.com predicts.