Rains over Central India may reduce from Sunday with the all-important trough over land expected to migrate from its current position towards the foothills of the Himalayas.
This is a usual pattern with the South-West Monsoon, which signals further increase in rainfall for the foothills including in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar from July 1 to July 6, the India Met Department (IMD) said.
The alert comes on a day when the Monsoon advanced into remaining parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, thus covering the entire country 17 days ahead on Friday, the IMD said.
This is being attributed to the weakening over the rain-driving Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave as it transits from West Indian Ocean (and adjoining Arabian Sea) to the Bay of Bengal.
Easing off
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology had observed a couple of days ago that the strong Indian monsoon powered by the wave would ease towards the weekend.
Meanwhile, the IMD said that the 24 hours ending Friday morning saw heavy rain over Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, East Rajasthan, West Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Konkan, Goa, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, hills of Bengal, Coastal Karnataka and Kerala.
An extended forecast valid from July 2 to 6 said widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls is over North-East India and along the northern parts of the West Coast.
Isolated to scattered rainfall is likely over North-West, West, Central and South India while it would be scattered to fairly widespread rainfall over East India.
Heavy rains
Forecast for the three intervening days (valid from Friday to Sunday) are as follows:
Friday: Heavy rain at a few places with very heavy rain at isolated places for Coastal Karnataka; and heavy to very heavy rain for East Rajasthan, Konkan and Goa.
It will be heavy at isolated places over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, hills of Bengal, Sikkim, Odisha,Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, West Madhya Pradesh, West Rajasthan, North Gujarat and Kerala.
Saturday: Heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places over Assam, Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and Coastal Karnataka; heavy at isolated places over Arunachal Pradesh, hills of Bengal, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Kerala.
Sunday: Heavy to very heavy with extremely heavy rain at isolated places very likely over Assam, Meghalaya; heavy rain at a few places with very heavy rain for Uttarakhand and East Uttar Pradesh. Heavy to very heavy rain is forecast at isolated places over Arunachal Pradesh, hills of Bengal, Sikkim and West Uttar Pradesh.
It will be heavy at isolated places over Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura; Bihar, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Coastal Karnataka.