Remember finding ‘shapes’ in clouds as a child? There’s apparently a lot of weather science to it. "When clouds appear like towers, the earth is refreshed by frequent showers," goes the saying. It is thought that white clouds resembling cauliflower or castles pack a lot of rain. Over Tamil Nadu today, it would mostly be innocent clouds resembling billowy cotton – no match to their towering cousins. But watch out if they start to swell and take on a grey tint, which are signs of thunderstorms in the making.
This (Thursday) morning, the clouds over the #Tamil Nadu coast grew less intense, with a change in the wind direction - from mainly north-easterly to easterly and south-easterly, especially north of #Puducherry.
#Chennai had a cloud cover of 36 per cent with winds being southerly to south-westerly, as per morning satellite pictures. The #India Meteorological Department (IMD) has hinted at the possibility of rain for the city. Weather folklore has it that rain from the South may prevent the drought, but rain from the West is always the best!
Along the rest of the coast, Puducherry had a cloud cover of 34 per cent; #Nagapattinam, 35 per cent; #Thondi, 33 per cent. With the seas behaving well, given the absence of major weather systems, clear weather is forecast for fishermen along the Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, Karnataka, and Kerala coasts and around Lakshadweep.
In the interior, #Vellore (sunny) had 43 per cent cloud cover; #Tiruchirapalli (cloudy), 51 per cent; #Madurai, (mostly sunny), 44 per cent, #Tirunelveli (partly cloudy), 43 per cent. It was slightly even less intense at 22 per cent (cloudy to sunny) over #Coimbatore. #Salem (4 per cent) will be mostly mostly sunny and clear; the ghats too were clear except in Pollachi (48 per cent) and Valparai (34 per cent).
Rain/snow possible in North
In the North-West of the country and away, a fresh feeble #western disturbance was observed over South-East Afghanistan and cod linking Quetta, Multan and Bahawalnagar in Pakistan and Bathinda, Patiala, Saharanpur, and Pauri in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in India. Under its influence, light isolated rain/snow is likely over the hills of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand today and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday).
Weather stays active over East India
The continued confluence of easterly winds (over the rest of Peninsular India) from the Bay of Bengal and westerly winds will trigger scattered to fairly widespread rainfall/thundershowers over East India and isolated to scattered rainfall/thundershowers over Central India from today (Thursday) to Saturday. Tamil Nadu too had seen some of them headed to its coast and interior yesterday, but not as much today.
The weather folklore on reading weather from spider behaviour mentioned in yesterday's column elicited response from various Twitter handles as follows:
So, how's the weather in your neck of the woods? Share your pictures, videos and feedback on Twitter with @businessline and @vinsonkurian. Have a great day.
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