North-East monsoon may set in over next two days, says Met Dept

Conditions are favourable for the exit of the South-West monsoon from the landmass and commencement of the North-East monsoon over the next two days, an India Met Department outlook said.

Also called the monsoon on retreat or reverse monsoon, the impending season will initially impact Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and adjoining south Karnataka and south Andhra Pradesh.

Ahead of this, the South-West monsoon would withdraw in its entirety. On Friday, the monsoon has exited the remaining parts of east India, Odisha, Telangana and north interior Karnataka. The withdrawal will coincide with the commencement of the North-East monsoon, as per the depiction by the Met Department.

Easterly winds had set in over south India two days ago, but persisting rains from remnant of cyclone Hudhud had delayed the withdrawal process of the South-West monsoon from east India.

These rains have stopped mostly, allowing the withdrawal process to resume once again. It is now expected to dig deeper into south peninsula and thus cover the whole country.

The two weather systems generating moderate to heavy rain in different parts of south India persisted on Friday.

These include a cyclonic circulation in the upper air over Lakshadweep and Kerala, and a counterpart over south-west Bay of Bengal off Sri Lanka, which now lies as part of an expansive trough to the south-east.

It is the latter that is forecast to generate the most weather going forward, with some forecasting a low-pressure to build in the area.

This ‘low’ would hit Sri Lanka first and south-east Tamil Nadu later, triggering heavy rain over the next two or three days over southern Tamil Nadu and adjoining Kerala.

The rest of the peninsula may receive indifferent showers at best, a pattern that is forecast to hold until around October 25 when some weather models see a fresh ‘low’ forming over the Andaman Islands.

An experimental prediction featured by the US Climate Prediction Centre suspects that this system would take a while to organise itself, but grow as a storm and move west into the open Bay of Bengal.

By early November, it could reach even cyclonic strength off the north Tamil Nadu and adjoining Andhra Pradesh coast.

But the model forecast says that it would weaken considerably as it aims for a landfall over the Odisha coast this time, unlike predecessor cyclone Hudhud that wreaked havoc over the Andhra Pradesh coast.