Rain deficit narrows to 4% as monsoon peaks over West, East bl-premium-article-image

Vinson Kurian Updated - January 24, 2018 at 06:29 AM.

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The rain-deficit for the country as a whole as on date has narrowed down to four per cent with the monsoon suddenly peaking both to the west and east of the country.

The low-pressure area over south-west Rajasthan and adjoining Gujarat has beat forecasts to intensify three rounds to become a deep depression in the area.

Rare spectacle
There is also a counterpart depression in the making to the east of the country as well, making a rare spectacle of more than one strong monsoon system based over land dictating weather.

India Met Department has forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall and squally weather along coast over Gujarat, Rajasthan, Konkan, and Goa for the next few days.

Similar conditions will be replicated in the eastern parts especially over Gangetic West Bengal and Odisha where the other depression is expected to intensify as a deep depression.

The sudden spurt in monsoon in the north Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal is being attributed to the return of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave high in the atmosphere back over the Indian Ocean.

MJO wave returns The wave travels periodically from Africa into the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, before getting activated for the next cyclical journey over Africa.

It is fresh from setting up the busiest typhoon season since 1981 in the Pacific. Forecast models could not agree on whether it would carry some punch on return.

They have now been provided with an answer, an update from the Australian Met Bureau on Tuesday said. It went on however to add that the MJO signal has started weakening from Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a Central Water Commission update said that live storage in the country’s reservoirs is 115 per cent of the last year’s storage and 108 per cent of the normal.

Published on July 28, 2015 17:10