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Huge banks of clouds racing in from a southwest-to-northeast direction have brought southwest monsoon into the Maldives on Saturday.
The Maldives and Sri Lanka are the two main ports of call for the Arabian Sea branch of the monsoon as it rushes in to erupt along the Kerala coast of mainland India.
HEAVY RAIN
Maldives' capital Male experienced rain and thundershowers for most part of the day. The local meteorological services agency has said that wind speeds could clock up to17 knots (31 km/hr) gusting to 35 knots (64 km/hr) until Sunday morning.
This makes for strong onset conditions. Heavy rain has been forecast over the southern and central atolls during this period.
Meanwhile, south-western parts of Sri Lanka too are gearing up to welcome the seasonal rain system with an active monsoon trough lurking in the neighbourhood.
The Sri Lankan Met Department assessed prevailing weather on Saturday as pre-monsoonal.
May 25 is the normal date of monsoon onset for the island nation. So, technically speaking, the rains have been delayed there by a day already.
DELAYED IN LANKA
Earlier, the Bay of Bengal arm of the monsoon had been delayed by two days before it broke in over the Andaman Sea.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Met Department forecast strong winds and thundershowers for many parts of the country until Sunday.
It has also warned the public to take precautions to minimise the damage cased by lightning.
On Saturday evening, Thiruvananthapuram, the gateway for monsoon for mainland India, witnessed mostly cloudy conditions.
Predominantly westerly-to-southwesterly flows clocked 17 km/hr, which was not fast enough to set up monsoon onset conditions.
CHURN IN BAY
Prevailing humidity was 66 per cent, which was again below par.
Interestingly, the Climate Prediction Centre of the US National Weather Services seems to have the ‘all-clear' for onset of monsoon over Kerala by end-May/early June.
It also signalled the possibility of a tropical cyclonic development (likely depression) in the Bay of Bengal during this phase.
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