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The India Met Department (IMD) has on Monday joined the watch for a low-pressure area, the first of the pre-monsoon season, forming over South-East Bay of Bengal by this weekend or early next.
US model forecasts
The first pre-monsoon ‘low’ puts the monsoon that follows in little more than a month in perspective and announces the readiness of the Bay to host rain-maker systems.
Earlier last week, an ensemble model of the US National Centre for Environmental Prediction had hinted at the formation of the ‘low’ along the same timeline and its intensification into a potential cyclone.
Projections by the IMD satellite map charts are more or less in agreement with this, and point to a weather system of likely cyclonic strength over East-Central Bay by May 3.
At these coordinates, the cyclone would be closest to South Myanmar than anywhere on the East Coast of India. These are early projections just yet and could change depending on prevailing conditions over ground and in the atmosphere.
Cyclone projected
The US forecasts indicate that the cyclone might head towards Yangon and the mouth of River Irrawaddy between April 28 and May 2.
As forecast, the ‘low’ would be by the product of a parent system tagged ‘96S’ and lying just below the Equator (deep South of Sri Lanka) in the warm, open waters of Equatorial Indian Ocean.
The strong flows from ‘96S’ have been propagating to the North thousands of kilometres away and affecting the West and East coasts for the last couple of days.
A counterpart system is located hundreds of kilometres to the South-South-West off Madagascar, which is contributing its own bit to the strong southerly or westerly flows battering the Kerala, Lakshadweep and South Tamil Nadu coasts.
Swell waves
The swell waves would continue to be active along these coasts into Tuesday. The country’s East Coast as well as the West Coast of Andaman & Nicobar Islands would have to put up with the high-energy waves until Wednesday.
Hyderabad-based Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Sciences (Incois) advised the communities along Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Odisha, and Bengal, to exercise caution between Monday and Wednesday.
This is especially so given that the surging of waves during the high tide times could flood low-lying areas of the coasts during such events. The entire Kerala has been witnessing similar scenes over the last couple days.
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