The West Coast, interior Maharashtra and adjoining Madhya Pradesh are likely to be battered by heavy to very heavy rain during the next three-day period, according to global forecasts.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has marked out the area likely to receive some of the heaviest rainfall during this period.

RAINFALL TREND UPDATE

Saurashtra and Kutch is the only Met subdivision with 'scanty' rainfall (-77 per cent of long-period average) so far during this monsoon, while rainfall over adjoining East Gujarat is 'normal' (-18 per cent), according to IMD classification.

East and North-East India continue to be 'deficient' (-59 to -20 per cent), but most individual Met subdivisions have what are considered 'manageable' deficits, ranging between -20 to -30 per cent.

Only Uttar Pradesh (-42 per cent in West Uttar Pradesh and -48 per cent in East Uttar Pradesh) have bigger and worrisome deficits. The anticipated rains during the rest of the week and into the next could improve the situation here.

Meanwhile, the 'extreme wet area' notified by ECMWF for the next three days is bounded by Mumbai, Nashik, Indore, Itarsi, Jabalpur, Nagpur, Dhamtari, Jagdalpur and Nanded-Waghala, according to the ECMWF outlook. The towns/ cities falling under this footprint include Malegaon, Nandurbar, Jalgaon, Khandwa, Amravati, Yavatmal, Risod, Chandrapur and Latur.

On the West Coast, the areas faced with the fury of the monsoon during the three-day period include Boisar, Mumbai, Mangaluru, Kannur, Kozhikode, Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram and adjoining interior areas.

The foothills of North-West and East India also need to be alert, especially Jammu, Dharamsala, Shimla, Dehradun, Pokhri, Ranikhet, Gangtok, Siliguri and entire Nepal and Bhutan.

LOW-PRESSURE AREA

Only Tamil Nadu, coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat would likely be excluded from the vigorous monsoon conditions during this three-day period, and for the rest of the week as well.

The IMD has spotted a productive cyclonic circulation over North Odisha, which is driving the monsoon currently. It would soon have the company of a big-brother low-pressure area, which would lead to further escalation in rain activity.

The 'low' is forecast to form over North Bay of Bengal around Friday and become more 'marked' (first round of intensification), bringing heavy torrents to pound coastal Odisha and Bengal to begin with.

While doing so, it would hit the Bangladesh-Myanmar coast, only to rebound and head back to Bengal/ Odisha, before hitting an excessive wet track into East and Central India by July 18.

A National Agro-Met Advisory Service Bulletin issued by the India Met Department (IMD) said rice farmers in South Gujarat may make good use of the realised and expected rainfall and continue nursery sowing. Cotton and groundnut farmers in middle Gujarat, too, may use the window to take up sowing.

In East Rajasthan, this advisory will apply for red gram, green gram, groundnut, pearl millet, sorghum, maize and cluster bean, and in West Rajasthan, for pearl millet, cluster bean, mung bean and moth.

In Madhya Pradesh, sowing can continue for maize, soyabean and groundnut and in Chattisgarh, nursery sowing of rice and sowing of soyabean, til, redgram, maize, and groundnut.

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