Met sees fresh rain breaking out along coasts from weekend

An upper air cyclonic circulation has sprung up over north-east Bay of Bengal in what constituted the best news on the monsoon front on Wednesday.

This brings to successful closure the process of cloud building over an area extending from the Southwest Bay to the Head Bay that was on view over the past two to three days.

Satellite pictures showed that the clouds have spread out over to land, along the West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh coasts.

India Met Department said that the circulation persisted into the evening, sustaining hopes of its endurance in an otherwise dismal scenario of a weak and delayed monsoon.

Monsoon watchers would be monitoring the circulation, especially any sign of its descending to lower levels of the atmosphere to set up a low-pressure area.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts had earlier predicted that a ‘low’ would show up around the Head Bay by July 3 or 4.

In its outlook for the four days from Saturday, IMD said that rain or thundershowers would break out at many places along the West Coast and at a few places along the East Coast.

Thundershowers would also grow into a few places over the rest of South and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The ongoing activity at most places over the North-Eastern States and Sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim also would continue.

The Met also said that thundershowers would occur at isolated places over rest of the country outside Rajasthan.

Meanwhile, most of the North-West slipped under thundershower activity during the 24 hours ending Wednesday morning.

Himachal Pradesh, east Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, west Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi and west Uttar Pradesh were among the affected areas.

The activity continued until noon over parts of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, west Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and north Madhya Pradesh.

This has helped drive away the heat wave from these areas but the air has become oppressively sultry.

The heat wave has migrated now to parts of Central and adjoining East-Central India.