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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram , Nov. 28

HARDLY have the floodwaters drained completely from Tamil Nadu when comes a report of a cyclonic circulation churning viciously over the steaming southeast Bay of Bengal to turn into a depression on Monday.

The system is headed for a landfall on the north Tamil Nadu/coastal Andhra Pradesh coast during the latter part of this week. Christened 05B, it was located around 1,000 km out into the sea on Monday, but the distance it has not yet travelled is what worries meteorologists.

After feeding voraciously on the warm waters in the southeast, the system will possibly encounter the `relatively cool' central and southwest Bay. But it is only relatively cool, clarified Dr Akhilesh Gupta of the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF).

The prevailing sea surface temperature here is well above the threshold 26.5 deg centigrade required to sustain the system as it negotiates the home stretch.

Dr Gupta told Business Line that it packs all the necessary ingredients to grow into a cyclone, if not a severe cyclone, by the time it makes a landfall. The last mile approach would be announced much earlier, with heralding rain bands walloping the Tamil Nadu and Andhra coasts as early as within the next two days.

As a rule, most systems taking shape during this time of the year are seen taking the west-northwest route before crossing the land either over north Tamil Nadu or coastal Andhra Pradesh. The Orissa and West Bengal coasts have not been preferred as landfall points. But exceptions have been there, as in a system having moved north-northwest and then proceeding to cross the Bangladesh coast.

According to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the landfall is likely to happen around December 1 (Thursday). Real time weather forecasts put out by the National Centres for Environmental Protection (NCEP) also tend to agree with this prognosis. Importantly, these forecasts also suggest that the system will be active for at least six days before dissipating as a `low' over the west peninsular coast.

It would have dumped heavy rain over a wide swath of geography extending from south Tamil Nadu to north, south and north interior Karnataka, coastal Karnataka extending even to the Konkan, Rayalaseema and south coastal Andhra Pradesh, if varied model projections are anything to go by.

In fact, the ECMWF has gone on to forecast a successor `low' lurking over the southeast Bay by December 4 (Sunday next), possibly migrating from the intense cloud occupying the skies over the South China Sea.

Dr Akhilesh Gupta did not rule out such a scenario although the NCMRWF model did not throw up such an eventuality as of Monday.

In its forecast, the NCMRWF said rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall is expected to take place at most places over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands during the next two days.

On the west, the prevailing `low' was located over the central parts of the Arabian Sea. Prediction suggests its continued persistence but a westward-bound movement during the next three days. It is expected that both these systems may remain part of an east-west shear zone that is likely to remain active for another five days.

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