Rainfall surplus for the country as a whole has begun to inch back higher to seven per cent after a well-marked low-pressure area made its presence felt for a second day on the trot on Monday raining it down heavy over an entire region from the South Peninsula to Central, West and North-West, and East India until the morning.
Heavy to extreme heavy rain
India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the previous 24 hours witnessed heavy to very heavy rain with extremely heavy falls over parts of Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Konkan, Goa and Odisha; heavy to very heavy over Madhya Maharashtra, East Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Coastal and South Interior Karnataka; and heavy over Himachal Pradesh, East Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Saurashtra, Kutch, Telangana, Kerala and Coastal Andhra Pradesh.
Monsoon-friendly features
Apart from the well-marked ‘low’ that IMD expects to become a depression by Tuesday, other monsoon-friendly features working from behind the scenes included the East-West zone across Mumbai, Panvel, Manchar, Beed, Gangakhed, Dharmapuri, Bellampalli, and Sompeta across Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The offshore trough had shrunk to a fragment of its former self linking Maharashtra and Karnataka coasts on Monday evening (Gujarat to North Kerala coast earlier) while a cyclonic circulation hovered over West Rajasthan.
Dense clouds converge
Dense to very dense clouds hang low over Jaisalmer, Barmer, Jodhpur, Pali, and Bhinmal over West Rajasthan and across the international border into adjoining East Pakistan; Bhopal, Itarsi, Betul, Indore and Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh; Vadodara, Surat and Valsad in Gujarat; Nandurbar, Malegaon, Jalgaon, Shegaon, Nashik and Aurangabad in Maharashtra; Raipur, Kapsi and Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh; Sambalpur, Bolangir and Bhavanipatna in Odisha; and Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
Kerala dams on alert
Less dense clouds drifted out over Mumbai, Pune, Akluj, Solapur, Sangli and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra; Panaji in Goa; Kundapura, Mangaluru, Bagalkot, Vijaypura, Hassan, Davangere and Kalaburagi in Karnataka; and Ramagundam, Warangal, Manuguru, Hyderabad, Mahbubnagar, Proddatur and Hindupur in Telangana. The shear zone leaving the area and the monsoon trough getting curtailed brought less intense rainfall over Kerala but catchment areas of most reservoirs were still receiving prodigious inflows as the monsoon tail lashed the state on Monday.
All shutters at Idukki open
Authorities have taken a decision to open all five shutters of the Idukki reservoir at the Cheruthoni dam by Monday evening in order to hold the water level to desirable limits, according to Roshy Augustine, Kerala Minister for Water Resources. Three shutters were already open at Cheruthoni. Discharge was scheduled to be increased from 150 cumecs to 300 cumecs by the evening. Afew other large large reservoirs including Malampuzha, Idamalayar and Pampa, and a number of minor ones in the state have either been opened or are awaiting a decision to, according to sources. A general alert has been sounded to the downstream areas of all these reservoirs.