South may slip under wet cover in Hudhud’s wake

The East Coast and the southern peninsula may be bracing to go under a wet spell after erstwhile cyclone Hudhud made a landfall at Visakhapatnam on Sunday.

The cyclone has unlocked a battery of moisture-laden easterly winds with respective northerly and southerly components from either half of the Bay of Bengal.

The stage is being set for the North-East Monsoon whose onset is best inferred from a calibrated increase in rainfall over the country’s eastern flanks and peninsular India.

The US National Centre’s for Environmental Prediction sees a fresh rain wave breaking out for peninsular India over the next few days. It is in the form of an easterly wave from south and southeast Bay of Bengal and headed towards Sri Lanka and adjoining south peninsular India.

The easterly wave is a southerly counterpart to the western disturbance that impacts northwest India, but blowing in from the opposite direction.

A cyclonic circulation may get embedded into the wave off the south-southeast of Sri Lanka, which would erupt over the coast of the island nation, sending break-away rain waves to adjoining peninsular India coast.

The US Climate Prediction Centre said that rains may gradually consolidate over Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka during the rest of the week and continue into the week that follows.

In fact, the easterly wave activity is shown gaining prominence around October 17. Coastal Tamil Nadu, especially around Chennai, is likely to witness a spell of rain from then.

Meanwhile, erstwhile cyclone Hudhud weakened as a deep depression (just below cyclone status) and was located over south Chhattisgarh on Monday afternoon. It would undergo further weakening into the night.

As was forecast earlier, the rains are spreading to north and east, in line with a track dictated by an overarching western disturbance trooping in from north-west India.

Heavy to isolated heavy rain is forecast for Chhattisgarh, east Madhya Pradesh and interior Odisha and for two days for east Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and sub-Himalayan West Bengal.

The US National Centre’s for Environmental Prediction shows a spurt in heavy to very heavy rain over east Uttar Pradesh and Bihar tomorrow.

This would likely to come about as the Hudhud remnant interacts ‘gainfully’ with an incoming western disturbance along the Himalayan foothills in east India.