Sadly, pollution levels in Chennai have not seen any significant improvement. The good news is that there are prospects of winds changing direction towards the Tamil Nadu coast. This is what is emerging in the wake of the erstwhile very severe cyclone Bulbul having perished after its unidirectional flight ended in the wilds of the Sunderbans and adjoining Bangladesh.
Curse of the Bay lifted?
The curse over the Bay of Bengal appears to have lifted alongside, allowing winds to blow in a desirable and weather-friendly north-easterly to easterly direction. These winds would get even more heft with the remnant of tropical storm Nakri, which is preparing to hit Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and should send in a remnant circulation with its bands of easterlies across Indochina into the Bay of Bengal.
This in a well-known pattern associated with all westward moving storms in the North-West Pacific/South China Sea, especially during the North-East monsoon, with good tidings for Chennai and Tamil Nadu.
Going forward, two more storms — currently marked as low-pressure areas 91W and 92W in the West Pacific — are developing one after the other with an apparently westward track for now.
But the US Joint Typhoon Warning Centre suspects that both these storms, enjoying the warm sea waters but limited by not-so-friendly upper atmospheric conditions, could track to the North-West, instead of West.
Still, they are expected to influence the weather, thanks to associated bands of easterly winds — though not as prominent as with the purely westward-moving storm, especially with a track that takes them into the South China Sea, Hong Kong, the Hainan Province of China, or even South-West China.
Suffice to say, the easterly to north-easterly winds are returning, and are expected to not just blow away the overhang of pollutants over Chennai but also bring in some badly needed rains.
At 7 am this Monday, the city continues to be the southern capital with the poorest air quality, ranging from poor to moderate.
Air quality indices
For the second day running there is insufficient data being reported from Manali, which has had some of the worst readings among the four sites in the city monitored by the Central and State Pollution Control Boards.
In Bengaluru, the air quality, as measured by the National Air Quality Index of the Central Pollution Control Board, ranged this morning from moderate to satisfactory to even good.
Hyderabad, too, is reporting moderate pollution levels, though insufficient data has prevented usual suspect Sanathnagar from reporting its true levels, which have been the worst over the past few days in the Telangana capital.
Meanwhile, this is what Chennai’s bloggers and Twitterati had to say: