Vanakkam! A trough — a rudimentary but elongated low-pressure area that collects moisture blown in from the sea — has gotten embedded into the easterly wind flow from the Equatorial Indian Ocean off the South Sri Lanka coast to the South-West Bay of Bengal off North Tamil Nadu.

Well, that covers almost the entire stretch of the Tamil Nadu coast, and is the best thing to happen to the North-East monsoon. The moisture collected in the trough should in turn get directed towards the coast in the form of rain, though this will depend on a number of helpful local factors.

The trough has already brought 3 cm of rain to Tarangambadi (Nagapattinam), on Monday; and 2 cm each to Ambasamudram, Sivagiri, and Papanasam (all Tirunelveli); Anaikaranchatram Kollidam (Nagapattinam); Tenkasi (Tirunelveli), and Parangipettai (Cuddalore); and 1 cm each to Manimutharu (Tirunelveli); Usilampatti (Madurai); Rameswaram (Ramanathapuram); Palayamkottai (Tirunelveli); Karaikal (Karaikal), and Watrap (Virudhunagar).

The outlook for Chennai city is generally cloudy conditions. Light rain is likely to occur in some areas. Maximum and minimum temperatures are likely to be around 33 and 26 degrees Celsius, respectively. Sun, clouds, and showers are variously forecast to continue to test the patience of Chennaiites, who long for a real walloping by the easterly winds.

It will likely be the Chirala, Kavali, Nellore, Gudur and Sulurpetta areas along the adjoining South Andhra Pradesh coast that will see better gains this Tuesday morning. But things are forecast to change later into the day and night, with Chennai and the rest of the coast joining the party in turns.

The Regional Meteorological Centre of the India Meteorological Department sees light to moderate rain at many places over Tamil Nadu and Puducherry today (Tuesday). Heavy rain has been forecast for isolated places in the Dharmapuri, Salem, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi and Ramanathapuram districts.

What other forecasters see

International forecaster AccuWeather sees intervals of clouds and sunshine with a couple of showers during the day followed by a considerably cloudy night with a couple of showers.

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Isolated thunderstorms is the outlook from Weather.com, an IBM Business, the likelihood for which increases from 30 per cent during the day to 80 per cent at night.

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Chennai’s bloggers, their followers and the Twitterati assessed the city’s prospects as follows:

 

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