The strong phase of the monsoon that caused it to cover the entire country 17 days ahead of schedule yesterday, is now showing signs of easing, as was forecast by global models. For one, the offshore trough along the West Coast, monsoon backbone to the South of the country has 'derailed' from its usual position to lie extended from South Maharashtra coast to Lakshadweep.

Troughs shift base

During the active monsoon, it links South Gujarat to Kerala coast. Until this morning, the alignment, though truncated from South Maharashtra, had connected Kerala. The southern end connects with Lakshadweep now. For another, the land-based trough over North that drives the monsoon over Central and North India, has shifted to the North of its normal position, closer to the Himalayan foothills.

This would mean that the monsoon would be active or even vigorous to the North of the axis of the trough, which happens to be the foothills including along Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. By this noon, the axis connected Bikaner in Rajasthan with East Assam cutting across Alwar, Kanpur, Sultanpur, Muzaffarpur, Purnea and Dhubri.

The usual position of the axis connects West Rajasthan with the Bay of Bengal cutting across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha before its tail dips into the Bay. India Met Department (IMD) has said that the trough would start moving further to the North from tomorrow (Sunday) until Friday (July 6).

Rainfall outlook

As a result, the rainfall over Central India may get reduced as the bulk of the precipitation gets pushed towards the regions adjoining the foothills tomorrow and day after.

Outlook for today said that heavy to very heavy rain may lash isolated places over Assam, Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and Coastal Karnataka. It would be heavy over Arunachal Pradesh, hills of Bengal, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Kerala.

As for tomorrow, extremely heavy rain is expected in Assam and Meghalaya while it will be very heavy rain at isolated for Uttarakhand and East Uttar Pradesh.

Heavy to very heavy rain at isolated is also forecast for Arunachal Pradesh, hills of Bengal, Sikkim and West Uttar Pradesh and heavy over the North-Eastern States, Bihar, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Coastal Karnataka.

Heavy to very heavy with extremely heavy rain at for Assam and Meghalaya; heavy to very for Arunachal Pradesh, hills of Bengal, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand; and heavy over the North-Eastern States, Bihar, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Konkan, Goa and Coastal Karnataka is predicted for Monday.

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