Bikers take shelter at Cubbon Park Namma metro station in Bengaluru, during the heavy pre-monsoon showers that lashed the city on April 16, 2018. | Photo Credit: K_MURALI_KUMAR
A line-up of typical atmospheric formations such as cyclonic circulations and troughs has more or less heralded pre-monsoon conditions over the country.
While a series of western disturbances hold fort to the North-West, cyclonic circulations are present over Rajasthan, West Madhya Pradesh, the hills of West Bengal and interior Karnataka.
CYCLONIC CIRCULATIONS
Troughs, or areas of lower atmospheric pressure, lie to either side of the peninsula - over Equatorial Indian Ocean and South-East Arabian Sea and Equatorial Indian Ocean and South Bay of Bengal.
Both feature cyclonic circulations atop, even as a ‘wind discontinuity’ (opposing winds blowing into each other) over land ran from North Madhya Maharashtra into interior Tamil Nadu.
All of these atmospheric features are capable of creating associated weather marked by thunderstorms, lightning, high winds, and heavy rain.
Of these, the most significant weather event was noticed over South-East Arabian Sea, which was enough to divert the flight paths of North-West and South-East bound aircraft.
FLIGHT PATHS SHIFT
The core of the violent weather is currently visible over Lakshadweep. Earlier in the morning, it was located slightly to North-East of Lakshadweep and West of Kozhikode-Mangaluru on the West Coast.
Many international flights, including long-haul ones, were seen taking a detour to avoid the embedded massive thunderstorms which happened to line up along the busy West Asia-Asia-Pacific corridor.
These included Medina-Jakarta (Garuda Indonesia); Dammam-Thiruvananthapuram(Jet Airways); Sharjah-Kozhikode (IndiGo); Dubai-Adelaide (Emirates); Thiruvananthapuram-Dubai (FlyDubai); Cochin-Kuwait City (Kuwait Airways); Brisbane-Abu Dhabi (Etihad Airways); Colombo-Sharjah (Air Arabia); Dubai-Colombo (Sri Lankan Airways); Dubai-Sydney (Emirates); and Sharjah-Cochin (Air India Express).
Meanwhile, the broken cloud bands over Equatorial Indian Ocean, which are responsible for the pre-monsoon weather, has extended this morning right into the tip of the Horn of Africa.
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Published on April 17, 2018
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