A depression has taken shape in the Arabian Sea on Sunday and has the potential of intensifying as a deep depression by Monday, the India Met Department said.

The storm is moving through very warm seas (up to 31 deg Celsius) which support the process of evaporation and convection to line up tall thunderclouds around its core.

Collateral damage The storm would inflict some collateral damage on the progress of monsoon over mainland India, an outlook from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology suggested.

The monsoon may remain weak until the storm dissipates. Fresh flows are seen heading for the West Coast by June 17 marking its revival. The week that follows is likely to see the monsoon enter central India as a weak current, the outlook said. It may cover most parts of the country except north-west India by end-June.

Numbered cyclone Meanwhile, global models have already tagged the storm as 01A, a ‘numbered cyclone.’

This is the immediate previous procedure ahead of calling it by a name.

It has started to shift its bearing away from the West Coast. Models see it moving north-northwest from its current position over east-central Arabian Sea.

Paresh Nerurkar, a senior pilot flying in the Mumbai-Kochi corridor told BusinessLine that he could ‘feel’ the system from Goa with easterly gusts of wind in the heights.

He also said that movement of western disturbances dipping occasionally into the Makran coast (Karachi and neighbourhood) was also discernible.

Odd men out Associated winds blow into the developing storm and could weaken it. Nerurkar said that intensification of the storm may not work out beyond a point.

Most models surveyed except the IMD and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts hinted at its intensification as a full-fledged cyclone.

They both suggested the southeast Pakistan coast (just next to north-west Gujarat) as a landfall area later this week.

The rest saw a tropical cyclone steaming away west-northwest direction and dissipating over the Persian Gulf or the Oman coast.

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