East, Central India may see rain

There is a fresh alert about a monsoon depression forming off Coastal Odisha and the North Andhra Pradesh coast, promising to deliver a wet to very wet spell for East and Central India during the next four to five days. A wind field map put out by the India Met Department suggested the rain-driving depression may cross the coast and set up a track to the west-northwest towards South-West Rajasthan and adjoining North Gujarat by July 24.

This means that the system would have generated flooding rain along a track already made wet by a previous low-pressure area that had travelled all the way from East Uttar Pradesh to South-West Rajasthan.

And this is not all. As it reaches the Rajasthan-Gujarat border, the prevailing system would have induced the formation of a successor — and likely a second depression — over the Odisha coast. Forecasts indicate that even this new system would move west along the track already made familiar by its predecessors, dumping heavy to very heavy rain over almost the entire northern half of India.

What this leaves for the South Peninsula is something that bears watching. Since the lows are forming farther to the North-East along the coast, there is no scope for ‘as direct an impact as in East or Central India.’ The European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts agrees with the outlook of successor lows moving across North India during this week and the next.

The IMD had put Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Odisha under watch for the possibility of heavy rain and very heavy to extremely heavy rain on Monday.

Fishermen have been advised to exercise caution while venturing out into the seas off and along the coasts of West Bengal, Odisha and Coastal Andhra Pradesh. An almost similar outlook is valid for Tuesday when the heavy rain belt starts moving slowly to the west covering Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Vidarbha, and the neighbourhood.

Konkan, Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Maharashtra, Marathawada, Coastal and South Interior Karnataka would also benefit in the process before the ‘low’ rolls in further.

The US Climate Prediction says that the whole of North India would stay wet from July 17-22 with the heaviest rain falling over Konkan, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Telangana, southern parts of Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.