Monsoon deficit worsens to 12% as withdrawal is on track

With exactly 12 days to go for the end of the season, the monsoon has now run up a deficit of similar figure in percentage terms, a notch up than the week just past.

This needs to be seen also in the context of the drying of large parts of north-west and central India as the monsoon readies to withdraw from these areas.

The monsoon withdraws along the same path it had used to launch itself from the south-west of the country to the north-west.

This is along an arc that sweeps the plains of north-west India before covering east and north-east India, central India and the peninsula, in that order.

So the rains dry up first from the north-west (normally from the 1{+s}{+t} of September but delayed this time) and last from the peninsula – the latter would them host the North-East monsoon (or monsoon in retreat).

The South China Sea typhoon Kalmaegi made a landfall over southwest China and adjoining Vietnam earlier on Thursday even as an offspring low-pressure area persisted in the Bay of Bengal. In fact, this ‘low’ is for all practical purposes the last identified monsoon system active in the peninsular basin.

It should have brought in a rainfall of much higher intensity than it already has if only had Fung-Wong, a follow-up storm in the northwest Pacific, not tracked in the opposite direction and exerted its ‘pull.’

The new storm is headed towards Taiwan and further on towards Japan, according to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

By taking away residual flows from the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, the storm would only hasten the process of monsoon withdrawal from central India.

Thundershowers are seen lingering over western parts of Maharashtra, coastal Karnataka and adjoining Kerala, and parts of southern Tamil Nadu into the last week of the month.

The 24 hours ending Thursday morning saw rain/thundershowers lash coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema, north interior and coastal Karnataka, Konkan-Goa, Madhya Maharashtra and Odisha.

While coastal Andhra Pradesh, north Tamil Nadu and Odisha will witness varying amount of rains during the next week, the heavy to very heavy rain during the last phase of the monsoon shifts to the North-Eastern States. This is due to the west-ward bound rain waves from the South China Sea/northwest Pacific landing variously over the Myanmar and Bangladesh coasts before propagating towards the North-East.