Thunderclouds clambered up all over Kerala in the South as well as East and North-East India this morning as a string of showers parked itself over Afghanistan to India’s North-West.
The latter is part and parcel of back-to-back western disturbances forecast to affect North-West India over the next few days, India Met Department (IMD) said.
Clean for today
The cloud cover from Afghanistan had extended from Kandahar to North-North-East into Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan but the skies over Pakistan and adjoining North-West India are clear this morning.
This means that the ongoing rainfall activity over the hills and adjoining plains over North-West Indian would reduce today before picking up again from tomorrow, the IMD said.
Active in South
Meanwhile, another spell of thundershowers is due for parts of East and North-East India today, especially over East Bihar and hills of Bengal, as well as parts of Nepal and Bangladesh. For South Peninsula, isolated thunderstorms with gusty winds, occasional squalls and lightning with increased severity are forecast for Kerala, south interior Karnataka and north interior Tamil Nadu.
The violent weather here could last until tomorrow, the IMD said, as its most pronounced sea-based source shifted based from South-East Arabian Sea to South of Kanyakumari this morning. Satellite pictures showed an area marked out in ‘red ball’ representing a cyclonic circulation hanging atop an existing trough over Equatorial Indian Ocean/Laccadive Sea, West of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Fly safe
Northern flanks of the circular cloud cover grazes Nagercoil, as Thiruvananthapuram, the Kerala capital 80 km to the North, woke up to cloudy conditions in the morning.
A number of aircraft flying across South-East Arabian Sea, Laccadive Sea and Sri Lanka flew around the ‘read ball’ of thunderstorms as they proceeded either North-West or South-East of the busy corridor.
These included Jedda-Banda Aceh (Garuda Indonesia); Kuwait City-Colombo (Sri Lankan Airlines); Dubai-Colombo (FlyDubai); Colombo-Sharjah (Air Arabia); and Bangkok-Male (Maldivian).