India Met Department (IMD) has warned of high winds in the Bay of Bengal as this morning's low-pressure area intensified a round to become more 'marked' over Central and adjoining South Bay.
Squally winds with speeds reaching 40- to 50 km/hr and gusting to 60 km/hr, which correspond to those of a monsoon depression, have been warned of in these seas for today.
The IMD expects the well-marked 'low' to become a depression during the next 24 hours, an eventuality that could as well happen early into this window.
Fishermen have been advised against venturing out into the seas around the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Thunderstorm and lightning are likely at isolated places over North Coastal Andhra Pradesh.
Squally winds with speeds gusting to 60 km/hr are likely along North Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Coastal Odisha tomorrow, the IMD outlook said.
Fishermen are being extended a warning not to venture along these coasts tomorrow. This also happens to be the projected location for a landfall of the depression.
The IMD has not entirely ruled out its further intensification as a deep depression or a cyclone though the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts seems to discount that possibility.
Interestingly, the US Climate Prediction Centre does not see the South Peninsula making any major gains in precipitation as the depression crosses the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coast.
Instead, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and the plains of Bengal would benefit, since the causative weather system would be guided north-east along the coast by prevailing winds from North-West.
The rains, though not very heavy, may come to the South Peninsula from the week beginning October 23, associated with what looks like a delayed onset of the North-East monsoon.
These rains are likely to be generated from a fresh low-pressure area in the Bay that will ride on an incoming 'pulse' from erstwhile typhoon Khanun that made a landfall of Vietnam coast yesterday.