As expected, tropical depression ‘Doksuri’ in northwest Pacific has intensified into a tropical storm (deep depression).
It is tracking west-northwest towards northernmost Philippines.
This is the fifth storm marching across India’s territorial waters as if from an assembly line and with implications for the concurrent monsoon here.
The monsoon continues to be in a limbo, and has hardly recovered from the draining impact from predecessor storm ‘Talim’ raging in the same location as ‘Doksuri’s.
‘Talim’ had followed on the heels of destructive typhoons (tropical cyclones) ‘Mawar’ and ‘Guchol’ in the northwest Pacific.
All three had tracked a north-northeast track into the north-central Pacific, considered inimical to the interests of the monsoon.
Viewed from that context, tropical storm ‘Doksuri’ comes as a relief in that the forecast direction of movement is west-northwest into East China Sea.
The storm is forecast to bypass Hong Kong and hit the south China coast to the southwest of Zhangzhou in another three to four days.
Relief rally
This would mean that ‘Doksuri’ would command the southwesterly monsoon flows, although some forecasts indicate that the Bay of Bengal might also witness some churn during the period.
Its track also raises the possibility of a ‘pulse’ continuing to track west to reach Bay of Bengal, which could ultimately boost the monsoon performance.
In any case, the monsoon is forecast to make a relief rally over mainland India after ‘Doksuri’ dies off, with a surge of flows across the Arabian Sea.
The moot question is how long this rally would be able to sustain. Early forecasts indicate it may not hold beyond three to four days.