Grim forebodings from a persistently ugly weather front loomed large on Tuesday as the country prepared to observe its 72nd day of Independence on Wednesday.
The day coincides with yet another peaking phase of a very wet monsoon, which once again triggered landslips and flooding in the Highlands in Wayanad, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Palakkad districts in Kerala.
The hill-bound Wayanad district has been marooned, and, towards the south, the same fate befell Munnar in Idukki district even as rescue and relief operations for an earlier bout of natural disasters are on.
On Tuesday, the Centre issued a flood warning for nine districts of Tamil Nadu due to the heavy rainfall in Kerala and Karnataka. These are Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, Salem, Erode, Namakkal, Karur, Thiruchirappalli, Thanjavur and Nagapattinam.
The enhanced rainfall activity over Kerala, Karnataka and the ghat areas of Tamil Nadu is likely to continue for the next two days, the IMD said, adding that the intensity would reduce thereafter.
Heavy to very heavy rain with extremely heavy falls over Odisha; heavy to very heavy rain over Coastal Karnataka and Kerala, Chhattisgarh, South Interior Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Heavy falls over Assam, Meghalaya, Gangetic West Bengal, Jharkhand, West Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, East Rajasthan, East Madhya Pradesh, Konkan, Goa, Madhya Maharashtra, Vidarbha, Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
‘Rough’ to ‘very rough’ sea conditions are likely along the Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal and Odisha coasts and around Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Fishermen are advised not to venture into these areas.
The current spell is the handiwork of the latest low-pressure area off the Odisha-Bengal coast.
It intensified and became ‘well-marked’ on Tuesday and is expected to further intensify into a depression by Thursday.
This will be followed close on its heels by another a low pressure expected to develop over North Bay by August 18 (Sunday), the IMD said. This will would prolong the wet session over a large parts of the country into last week of August.
An extended forecast from August 19-21 said that widespread rain likely over parts of East and adjoining Central India, while it would be fairly widespread to widespread rainfall over Western Himalayan region, northern plains and along the West Coast.
Scattered to fairly widespread rainfall has been forecast for the western parts of central and interior parts of South Peninsula, North-East India, while it would be isolated over the South-East peninsula.