India Met Department (IMD) has further extended the watch for formation of a low-pressure area in the North Bay of Bengal, signalling reduced level of confidence with respect to its timing.

Due to the absence of a 'low' here, the monsoon flows are currently under the sway of tropical storm Ewiniar, located to more than 190 km off Hong Kong in the North-West Pacific.

Pacific storms

A second storm, named Maliksi, to the East of Philippines, is forecast to strengthen in due course. Both storms are moving away East-North-East, and not particularly helpful for the Indian monsoon.

A couple of earlier storms in the North-West Pacific were initially instrumental in scaling up the flows across the Arabian Sea and the Bay soon after the onset phase.

The missing cog in the monsoon wheel is the 'low' in the Bay which would harvest some of the incoming flows from around the Head Bay and direct them back to Central India.

IMD persists with the outlook for the 'low' and intensification as a depression, a view being shared by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

Monsoon advance

But the latter sees the 'low' taking shape over land by Monday/Tuesday only, likely intensifying a round but a good part of the flows blasting into Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The US Climate Prediction Centre sees the 'low' materialising over the Bay waters during the week ending June 12 (Tuesday) but does not indicate the exact day of cyclogenesis.

A strengthened monsoon after formation of the 'low' would bring heavy to very heavy and isolated extremely heavy rainfall along the West Coast Monday.

IMD said this morning that conditions are favourable for the advance of monsoon into remaining parts of Goa, Karnataka and Rayalaseema; some parts of south Maharashtra and Telangana; and some more parts of Coastal Andhra Pradesh by Saturday.

Rain scenario

It could likely enter remaining parts of Maharashtra, some parts of South Gujarat region, southern parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal, Sikkim, and remaining parts of the North-Eastern States during Saturday to Monday.

During the week that started yesterday (June 7 to 13), overall rainfall activity would be normal to above normal over the country as a whole. Exceptions are parts of the Western Himalayan region and extreme South Peninsular India, where it is likely to be below normal during the week.

During the subsequent week (June 14 to 20), there may be significant reduction in rainfall over most parts of the country outside North-East and adjoining East India, where it is likely to be above normal.

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