Odd forecasts made as early as a week ago by a few US-based weather models have come fruition with a storm developing in the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday.
Previous day’s low-pressure area northwards in the warm waters of east-central Bay and ramped up in strength to become a monsoon depression.
Myanmar-bound?The system will ultimately be guided to the east-northeast, according to an India Met Department outlook on Wednesday.
This will take it towards the Myanmar-Bangladesh coast where the waters are even more warm, causing it to intensify another round and become a deep depression, just below cyclone status.
The US models are of the view that the system may drift back into the north-central Bay of Bengal, some distance away from Odisha-Seemandhra coast next week.
It may also trigger action across the peninsula over south-east Arabian Sea, which is likely to lead to the onset of the monsoon over the south-west coast along Kerala.
A low-pressure area taking shape off the coast of Kerala will likely precipitate the onset of monsoon around the normal June-1 timeline, says the US National Centre for Environmental Prediction.
May head backExtended outlook by the Met Department too suggests a similar scenario with the Bay of Bengal storm (a depression by then) heading mostly towards the Seemandhra coast.
It sees only a trough-like formation (not amounting to low-pressure area) developing over south-east Arabian Sea and westwards away into south-central Arabian Sea by Wednesday next (May 28).
This, as inferred by the projection, may not be sufficient to precipitate monsoon rains over Kerala as flows heading in towards the coast may not be strong enough.
Skewed patternMeanwhile, skewed summer weather pattern continued to prevail over north-west India. Back-to-back western disturbances have driven away the heat wave towards the east of the country.
Rain and thundershowers are being forecast over the next few days over north-west where normally the heat builds up to peak levels to set up the right temperature/pressure differential relative to Kerala coast.
The Arabian Sea monsoon current rides this gradient to progress along the west coast to meet up the Bay of Bengal arm and the combined current races into the farming heartland of north-west India. This pattern could get upended by the dislocation of the core heat towards the east of the country (Bihar, Gangetic West Bengal, Odisha) and how this affects the spread of monsoon remains to be seen.