Arabian Sea off Kerala warming up to host monsoon over next three days

Conditions are favourable for the monsoon to reach within ear’s shot of Kerala along the south-west coast during the next two to three days, an India Meteorological Department update said on Monday.

The monsoon is now expected to enter the south-east Arabian Sea, Maldives, Comorin region, and more parts of south and central Bay of Bengal during the next two to three days.

The northern limit (the maximum the monsoon has progressed) has remained stuck over Hambantota in Sri Lanka and onwards east-northeast into the larger Bay of Bengal over the past few days.

Meanwhile, winds are turning monsoon-friendly south-westerly over Maldives and are clocking 8-24 km/hr and gusting to 30 km/hr. They need to accelerate further.

International forecasts rule out a particularly spectacular onset this year since there is no sea-based or atmospheric disturbance coming anywhere in the near-tropics, part of the larger monsoon system.

After super typhoon Dolphin, the Pacific has lapsed into a state of calm. Nor is there any sea-based weather system either in the Arabian or in the Bay of Bengal, which would have helped pull the monsoon in.

The International Research Centre for Climate and Society at Columbia University does not see any major weather activity happening over southern India at least until May 29.

The rain would tend to be normal or below normal for the region during the period. Coastal and adjoining interior Tamil Nadu, particularly to the north, would witness dry conditions (below normal rain).

The US National Centres for Environmental Prediction has predicted that piloting rains may lash the Kerala coast from Tuesday onwards.

The winds here were north-westerly but becoming westerly, which is monsoon-friendly, on Monday. They have to stabilise to being westerly to south-westerly to trigger the monsoon onset.

Meanwhile, a heat wave tore through large swathes of northwest, central and adjoining north and east and southeast peninsular India.

A high-pressure area extending from West Asia and pushing across the north Arabian Sea and probing an entire stretch of land form Gujarat to Vidarbha has set up the core of the heating.

The high-pressure area brings hot and dry air from the deserts of West Asia and has strong clockwise winds around it blowing the heat into the interior regions of central and peninsular India.

On Sunday, Odisha, coastal Andhra Pradesh, and north Madhya Pradesh bore the brunt of the heat wave. These conditions prevailed over the neighbourhood to the west, north and east as well.

The heat wave is forecast to stay anchored across the central, peninsular and adjoining east peninsula until Friday, international models indicate.