Deep depression off Gujarat to push heavy rain into North-West

The monsoon depression over north-east Arabian Sea intensified into a deep depression on Tuesday afternoon and was poised to cross the south Gujarat coast near Diu later in the evening.

In view of this, the India Met Department has forecast very heavy rainfall with isolated extremely heavy rainfall for Saurashtra, Kutch and Gujarat on Wednesday.

Rains for North-West The rains will extend into the rest of north-west India as well. Heavy to very heavy rainfall is likely over Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and to the southeast, over Konkan and Goa.

The wet spell would cover Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

But on Tuesday, the monsoon has reached Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh and entire Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. This would mean that the rains lashing north-west India would be categorised as pre-monsoon showers. Interaction of an incoming western disturbance with monsoon easterlies could bring the monsoon here.

Surplus run Meanwhile, the triumphant run of the monsoon helped in no small measure by a depression each in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea has delivered a surplus of 23 per cent as on date.

Northwest India is the lone meteorological subdivision in deficit (7 per cent). All others have returned surplus figures with the highest 51 per cent from central India.

South peninsula with 33 per cent and east and north-east India with 4 per cent bring up the rear.

A reasonably good run was expected over peninsular and adjoining central India during June but what eventually materialised is beyond the wildest projections by models anywhere.

The big differentiator was a passing Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave that struck a pause over central and equatorial Indian Ocean over the past week or two.

MJO support The wave transits the Indian Ocean from west to east periodically in the higher levels of the atmosphere but promotes cloud-building at the ground level.

The MJO signature was written over the two crucial weather systems – depression in the Bay of Bengal and a deep depression in the Arabian Sea – according to a review by leading models.

The wave has already left the Indian Ocean and is now active over the Pacific Ocean, near Indonesia and the Philippines.

Lack of MJO support will be evidenced in the reduction of rainfall over the country during the first two weeks of July, says the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

The rains over north-west and central India will start lifting from by the weekend, forecasts indicate.