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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct. 16 A western disturbance lying over Jammu and Kashmir has triggered fairly widespread rain and snow over the western Himalayan region during the past 24 hours.

The system has an embedded weather-making trough, which numerical weather models indicate would travel along a south-southeast direction triggering wet weather over the plains of north India for another day at least. The system is shown to dissipate after emptying the contents along over Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Haryana. The rains could spill over into an area extending from west Rajasthan into Bihar, according to some models.

While the low-to-medium clouds associated with convection upfront of the system caused mercury to rise, the consequent precipitation has brought it down by 4 to 6 deg C over the hilly regions and 2 to 4 deg C in the adjoining plains, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) update said on Thursday. In the south, the persisting feeble ‘low’ over the southeast Arabian Sea is expected to become marked.

The system has spawned scattered to fairly widespread rainfall over many parts of the south peninsula and Lakshadweep, which is expected to continue over the next three days as well.

But some models said the system runs the risk of stagnating over the west-central Arabian Sea before being accosted by strong westerly currents. It may thus be prevented from going the whole hog making a landfall over Yemen or the Horn of Africa.

In its short-term outlook, the IMD said an ‘easterly wave’ is expected to approach from extreme east Bay of Bengal. It could be a likely adjunct of the erstwhile Tropical Storm No. 22 that dissipated over Vietnam on Tuesday/Wednesday. An easterly wave is known to cause weather ahead of itself, and will travel in a fixed track to impact Tamil Nadu and later Kerala.

In fact, these are the two States where it will have any direct impact at all. The wave has a wobbly motion about it that places it alternatively to the front or back relative to its centre even as the whole system registers a net forward movement to the west.

The wave has small amplitude in the initial stages, and produces mild rain showers. Powerful thunderstorms and the force of high-altitude winds amplify it when atmospheric conditions are favourable. Several severe thunderstorms begin to form, and eventually a tropical storm may develop.

Forecasts from a random grouping of numerical weather models surveyed seemed to indicate that the Bay system would get a move straight to the west initially, as it its wont. But it is shown to intensify around October 22 (with winds gusting to 37 km/hr) after exiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with a change in direction of movement.

From here, it would still be quite some distance to the Indian coast, giving it ample time to intensify further. But opposing wind regime from a western disturbance timed to arrive concurrently from the northwest border would have say on the extent of intensification.

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