A monsoon depression is in the making over South-East Uttar Pradesh and adjoining North-East Madhya Pradesh during the next three days, promising to drive up the rains over North India this week and early next week. It is not usual for a depression to form over land unless it is backed up by strong monsoonal conditions, which are amply in evidence over East and North India. These will duly extend to cover North-West India and West India.

Heavy rain forecast

The India Met Department has warned of heavy to very rain for many parts of the region, also covering the rain-deficit Jharkhand, Gangetic West Bengal, West Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha.

The rain-deficit regions in the South, mainly Kerala and South Interior Karnataka, should start gaining from the development starting this weekend onwards, an IMD outlook said.

Rainfall this year has been well-distributed overall, says KJ Ramesh, Director-General, IMD. Random deficits have largely been taken care of by fresh spells breaking out in good time, he told BusinessLine by phone from Kochi.

He was in the city to attend a function at which Sceince & Tech Minister Harsh Vardhandedicated the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at the Cochin University of Science and Technology to the nation .

Ramesh said known quirks associated with a good monsoon can still leave some parts of the landscape (around 20 per cent) high and dry. Kerala and South Interior Karnataka might have suffered early into the season in this manner. The intermittent rains in Kerala have reduced the deficit to a ‘manageable’ 22 per cent. These rains are expected to sustain for another week, improving the situation.

South Interior Karnataka, too, could receive a fresh spell of rain from a low-pressure area likely forming in the Bay of Bengal over the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coasts early next week, with flows sourced from the Arabian Sea also filling the region.

Depending on the exact location of the ‘low,’ these flows and the rains they carry should take care of the deficit in both Kerala and South Interior Karnataka, he said.

Meanwhile, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts suspects the ‘low’ may intensify into a depression, raising prospects of heavy rain in the southern part of the Peninsula.

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