The monsoon, now into its second week, is expected to enter more parts of Maharashtra, including Mumbai, as well as Chhattisgarh, Odisha and remaining parts of Coastal Andhra Pradesh by Saturday.

On Friday, it had covered Goa, Karnataka and Rayalaseema; some parts of South Konkan, South Madhya Maharashtra and Marathwada along the West Coast and adjoining interior on Friday.

Monsoon progress

To the East, it has entered some parts of Vidarbha, South Chhattisgarh and South Odisha, entire Telangana and most parts of Coastal Andhra Pradesh, the India Met Department (IMD) said.

Its northern limit passes through Ratnagiri, Solapur, Nanded, Adilabad, Bailadila, Malkangiri, Kalingapatnam, Agartala, Lumding, and North Lakhimpur.

During Sunday to Monday, it may enter remaining parts of Maharashtra; parts of South Gujarat; southern parts of Madhya Pradesh, Bengal and Sikkim; more parts of Chhattisgarh and Odisha; and remaining parts of the North-Eastern States.

The IMD says the anticipated low-pressure area over north Bay of Bengal may materialise by Saturday, after a fair bit of playing around with the projected timeline.

This phase would also signal strengthening of the monsoon, accompanied by heavy to very heavy and isolated extremely heavy rainfall, which was on view on Friday. This will continue on Saturday as well, the IMD said.

The 24 hours ending Friday morning saw heavy rain being reported from Konkan, Goa, Madhya Maharashtra, Coastal and South Interior Karnataka, Bengal and Kerala.

Among major stations receiving heavy to very heavy rainfall (in cm) are: Shirali 19; Mormugao 18; Agumbe 17; Honnavar 15; Panambur 13; Cannur 12; Madikeri 10; Sholapur and Kozhikode 9 each; Panjim and Kolkata (Alipore) 7 each; Jharsuguda and Ratnagiri 6 each; Balurghat, Pantnagar, Bhagalpur, Udgir, Karwar, Thiruvananthapuram 5 each;

Meanwhile, the delay in the formation of the ‘low’ in the Bay has caused the monsoon flows to be under the command of tropical storm ‘Ewiniar’ in the North-West Pacific, located to the West of Hong Kong.

Pacific storms

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

But 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.

An extended outlook by the IMD said that overall rainfall activity during this week (June 7-13) will be normal to above normal over the country as a whole. Exceptions are parts of the Western Himalayan region and extreme South India, where it is likely to be below normal.

During the subsequent week (June 14-20), there may be a 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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