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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 21 The easterly wind regime is expected to settle into place over the Bay of Bengal Monday onwards, throwing up a window of opportunity for the north-east monsoon to launch itself.

The resident anticyclone over north and central India extended its reach to north-east India smothering remnants of the southwest monsoon. These stray circulations had worked against the advance of the retreating monsoon.

A fertile ‘shear zone’ of monsoon turbulence is becoming active again over the peninsula. A low-pressure area developing over southeast and adjoining east-central Bay around Thursday is expected to sweep the zone awash with moisture and spark heavy rains.

Higher pressure (anticyclone) to the north is what is needed to bring the northeast monsoon to the fore over southern India, notes Mr Jim Andrews of AccuWeather.com.

A rather weak easterly wind flow is indicated over the Bay; this will foster at least scattered heavy falls amongst showers and thunderstorms over Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

An India Meteorological Department (IMD) update on Sunday said that current meteorological analysis suggested scattered to fairly widespread rainfall activity over south peninsula with isolated heavy to very heavy falls over Kerala and Tamil Nadu during the next four days.

Rain or thundershowers are likely at many places over Tamil Nadu, Kerala and coastal and south interior Karnataka; and at a few places over coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. This pattern would gradually give in to being rampaging northeast monsoon rains.

Meanwhile, the ‘low’ in the Bay will have travelled some distance over the warm waters to ramp up to at least a monsoon depression (if not a cyclone) status by the time it crosses land over the Tamil Nadu coast by the weekend. The most interesting weather aspect is the potential for a tropical storm or depression over the Bay, says Mr Andrews.

Once over land, the system may drift across the peninsula and slide into the Arabian Sea to set up a storm possibly there also. There is a persistent cyclonic circulation over the Maldives and the adjoining southeast Arabian Sea lying in wait. The storm is seen as straying further into the west and may not impact India’s southwest (Arabian Sea) coast.

On Sunday, a cyclonic circulation persisted over the south Andaman Sea. A migrant from the South China Sea next door, this system is the one that could grow to set up the ‘low’ in the Bay.

The other circulation over southern Tamil Nadu and adjoining Kerala too persisted, after draining moisture over most parts of these two States on Saturday resulting in some of the heaviest rainfall recorded in recent times.

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Launch window ready for northeast monsoon

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