Tuesday's depression over South-East Arabian Sea homed in towards Minicoy, the gateway to the Lakshadweep islands, but may not intensify into a deep depression as expected initially. The system is located about 200 km South-East of Minicoy, 310 km South-West of Thiruvananthapuram and 330 km North-North-East of Male (Maldives) as at 5.30 this morning.

MAY KEEP STATUS

India Met Department (IMD) said that the system may continue to move North-North-West into the rest of Lakshadweep and manage to maintain the depression status for another day. It may start to weaken later, move out into the South-East Arabian Sea and adjoining East-Central Arabian Sea, which puts paid to forecasts of any intensification.

The weakening would come about as the underbelly of the system grazes the land features of Lakshadweep, cutting off convection from the warm sea waters which it was riding until then.

Additionally, it would have to contend with opposing westerly winds from a western disturbance currently over North Pakistan and adjoining Jammu & Kashmir and a brewing successor.

The South-Westerly winds that would have brought heavy rain and winds into the Kerala coast were also conspicuous by their absence until last night.

WINDS SANS INTENT

For instance, in Thiruvananthapuram, the winds were North-Westerly until late last night, which hardly had any moisture content with it.

This morning, however, the winds are Southerly, which are more rain-friendly from the view point of the location of the depression, and the conditions were overcast to start with.

But it is getting gradually sunny, with no hint of wind or rain. At Kochi, the conditions are reported to be foggy as read by overflying aircraft, but wind direction is essentially Northerly.

The same holds true for Kozhikode while in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, both Madurai and Thoothukudi airports reported North-Easterly winds under overcast conditions.

It is overcast as well in Bengaluru with winds being South-Easterly; cloudy and South-Easterly in Chennai; and overcast and North-Easterly in Coimbatore.

The foot print of rain clouds have largely disappeared over large parts of the land over the South Peninsula except over South-East coast of Tamil Nadu and up to Kozhikode on Kerala coast.