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The well-marked low-pressure area over north and adjoining east-central Bay of Bengal has intensified into a depression, as predicted by India Meteorological department (IMD) last night.
The storm lay centred over North Bay of Bengal, about 350 km east-southeast of Digha in West Bengal, an IMD update this morning said.
TO FURTHER INTENSIFY
The system is likely to intensify further into a deep depression, just a notch below a named cyclonic storm, and move in a northeasterly direction and cross Bangladesh coast between Chittagong and Cox's Bazar by tonight or tomorrow.
Earlier, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC) had issued a storm alert in the north and adjoining east-central Bay of Bengal.
RAISED LEVEL
What is significant is that the JTWC had raised to ‘high’ the level of alert on a tropical storm (not amounting to a named tropical cyclone) with an orientation towards to track east-northeast.
This would mean that Gangetic West Bengal or any other part of eastern India would be spared from the direct fury of the approaching storm. The JTWC saw the system hurtling towards the Bangladesh coast, north of Chittagong.
But high winds and associated rains and flooding are not entirely ruled out for the Gangetic West Bengal coast.
WESTERLY TROUGH
What is seen as diverting the storm track is a westerly trough approaching from northwest India and travelling east.
The brewing Bay storm will get tagged with the system and thus oriented away from any part of the eastern Indian coast.
Meanwhile, an upper cyclonic circulation holding on stubbornly to east-central Arabian Sea is continuing to attract meteorologists’ attention.
A US model has, over the past week or two, been consistently indicating the chance of a cyclone formation around the area after the Bay storm passes.
CHURN IN ARABIAN SEA?
The Arabian Sea storm is projected as brewing close to the Konkan coast but the forecasting agency doesn’t show the western Indian coast taking a direct hit.
In fact, from indications available as of now, it is entirely possible that the storm would be driven away from the coast by easterly winds associated with the northeast monsoon, which would have set in by then.
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