The latest typhoon ‘Yutu’ in the North-West Pacific could well have a significant bearing on the North-East monsoon as it prepares for an onset over the South Indian Peninsula over the next three to four days.
‘Yutu’ is situated quite some distance to the South-South-East of the Philippines on Tuesday, but the track it takes for onward movement is north-north-west, guiding it to a location equidistant from the Philippines and Taiwan into next week.
Heavy rain forecast
This is expected to give sufficient time to ‘Yutu’ to lord over the flows and direct them into the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand (Siam) and later into the Bay of Bengal.
From its perch off Taiwan and the Philippines, the typhoon would be able to push in the north-easterly flows into November 1. But even before that, seasonal easterlies would have entered the Bay to announce the onset of the North-East monsoon.
The India Met Department (IMD) has maintained its outlook for the seasonal rains to commence along the Tamil Nadu coast from around Friday. An East-West trough lay in readiness over the Sri Lanka latitudes.
While heavy rain was forecast at isolated places over Kerala on Tuesday, thunderstorms accompanied with lightning and gusty winds were warned of not just over Kerala but also Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
No weather warning has been issued for Wednesday and Thursday, but the status quo will be decisively broken on Friday and Saturday when heavy rains would likely lash isolated places over Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
‘State of churn’
From Friday on, typhoon ‘Yutu’ will take control over the north-easterly flows heading into South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand becoming easterly to south-easterly over the Bay of Bengal.
The US Climate Prediction Centre has said that the Bay will remain ‘active’ signalling passage of easterly waves and moderate to strong North-East monsoon conditions until mid-November.
During this period, the neighbouring Gulf of Thailand-South China Sea is also expected to stay in a state of churn and lend support to the North-East monsoon from across the international waters.
An extended outlook from October 28-30 said that widespread rainfall will break out over Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, while it will be isolated to scattered over the adjoining Met subdivisions.