Thiruvananthapuram, June 23 Monday’s low-pressure area in the east-central Arabian Sea spun furiously overnight to become a depression the next morning with a track to the northeast for onward movement.
On Tuesday, India Meteorological Department (IMD) expected this to become a deep depression (a notch below tropical cyclone status) and cross the south Gujarat coast the same evening/night.
NO CYCLONE Even so, IMD joined the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre in issuing a cyclone formation alert in the region. But Dr Akhilesh Gupta, leading operational forecaster and Adviser to Department of Science and Technology, ruled this out for two reasons.
For one, proximity to land would mean shorter distance to travel over water and lesser moisture to feed on. For another, increasing ‘shear’ from a westerly trough in the neighbourhood would break the back of the building storm.
The northeast track would take the storm straight over mainland India, heaving in the monsoon to initially over north Konkan and south Gujarat, including Mumbai.
Moisture influx The storm is shown to die out in another 24 to 30 hours, but it would have cleared the way for ‘huge moisture influx’ from the Arabian Sea, besides igniting the Bay of Bengal (cyclogenesis, or birth of a ‘low’).
According to Dr Gupta, the monsoon current would only strengthen with time, and the moderate intensity of the land-falling system would ensure more spatial of coverage of rains than would be the case if it were a cyclone.
Still, the rains are not seen sweeping much deeper beyond the west coast. So central India and the peninsular interior would have to wait a little longer before fresh moisture sweeps in from both the Arabian Sea and a freshly active Bay.
North Konkan, Mumbai and south Gujarat can expect heavy to very heavy rainfall during the next two days, Dr Gupta said.
On Tuesday, the IMD said conditions were favourable for further advance of monsoon over parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra, including Mumbai, and remaining parts of Karnataka during this phase.
Heavy rains Heavy to very heavy falls have been warned of at a few places and isolated extremely heavy falls of above 25 cm likely over Gujarat.
Isolated heavy to very heavy falls are also likely over Konkan, north madhya Maharashtra, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam and Meghalaya.
Squally winds speed reaching 45-55 km/hr gusting to 65 km/hr are likely along and off south Gujarat and north Konkan coasts during the next 24 hours.
The sea condition will be rough to very rough along and off these coasts. Fishermen are advised not to venture out.
Heat wave Meanwhile, severe heat wave conditions prevailed over Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh, east Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and coastal Andhra Pradesh.
Heat wave conditions also prevailed over west Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and parts of Uttarkhand, Haryana, Punjab and north Rajasthan. They are likely to continue over these regions during the next two days but would abate from Rajasthan.
Yesterday, the highest maximum temperature of 46.4 degree Celsius was recorded at Sambalpur (Orissa).
Heat wave conditions are expected to continue over most of east and northwest India and parts of central India during the next two days. These will lift initially from central and east India in tune with the advance of monsoon rains.
An IMD outlook until Saturday spoke about the possibility of monsoon advancement into more parts of east India.
Fairly widespread rains have been forecast for the west coast, east India, Chhattisgarh, north Andhra Pradesh, the Northeastern States and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
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