Now, TN coast may be bracing for a cyclone next week

Erstwhile Arabian Sea cyclone Nilofar may have died out, but it is now the turn of the Bay of Bengal to come up with its own, the second during this North-East monsoon, by next week.

India Met Department has signalled the formation of a fresh low-pressure area in the southwest Bay of Bengal off the Sri Lanka and adjoining Tamil Nadu coasts by Saturday.

The Met has refrained from giving indication in its bulletin, but wind field projections suggest that a tropical cyclone could be building up here next week.

Most international models surveyed concurred, with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts upgrading its projection of a likely depression to one that of a full-blown cyclone.

While a majority of the models seemed to suggest the Nagapattinam-Cuddalore-Puducherry belt along Tamil Nadu as a probable landfall area, the European Centre begged to differ.

Its early projections are pointing to Visakhapatnam and neighbourhood, the same area ravaged by very severe cyclone Hudhud, where the building cyclone will cross over by November 9/10.

The US Climate Prediction Centre sees both the Sri Lankan and adjoining south Tamil Nadu coasts being threatened by the cyclone.

It may interact with a passing western disturbance that digs deep into south to trigger rains over central India and adjoining southeast Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Another model said that the cyclone may not hit the Indian coast but will be driven away by the western disturbance towards Myanmar/Bangladesh.

Yet another model saw the cyclone remnant traversing the peninsula and landing up in the Arabian Sea off Mangalore-Konkan where it will regenerate as a ‘low.’

The fresh cyclone threat flows from the inferred eastward movement of a supportive Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave from west Arabian Sea and equatorial Indian Ocean.

The MJO wave had earlier precipitated the formation of very severe cyclone Nilofar in the Arabian Sea by influencing cloud formation in the lower atmosphere.

The MJO wave is also precipitating monsoon onsets over stretches of sea directly purveyed while on transit.

Interestingly, the wave will tick off activity in the west Pacific along concurrently with the Bay of Bengal. Models indicate the formation of a typhoon in the west Pacific off the Philippines.