Massive clouds are rising along a 300-km stretch from Ratnagiri to Alibag along the West Coast even as the resurgent monsoon broke open a new front on the East Coast this morning. A 555-km coastal stretch from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh to Saharabedi in Odisha has been obscured by thick clouds, with their footprint extending into the interiors.
CLOUD COVER GROWS
In the interiors, clouds have reached along an arch bounded by Sileru, Khairaput, Narayanpatna, Rayagada, Bellaguntha, Odagaon, Kuhudi, and Konarak. This covers the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha in the East, with the latter having a much larger area under cloud cover than the former.
Farther to the North-East along the East Coast, clouds of slightly lower intensity are building up from the East of the Hooghli River to the Meghna River along coastal Bengal and adjoining Bangladesh.
The main triggers for the cloud formation along the West Coast are an offshore trough from the Maharashtra coast to the Kerala coast and a land-based trough from Bihar to South Konkan.
The latter trough features cyclonic circulations at both its ends over Bihar and South Konkan, which has helped pipe in moisture into the trough that cuts across Chhattisgarh and Telangana. Yet another land-based trough connects Bihar with East Bangladesh, which explains the cloud build-up from Bengal to Bangladesh.
HELPFUL CIRCULATIONS
This trough, combined with a persisting cyclonic circulation over central Bay of Bengal, is pushing clouds into the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha coasts. The presence of the Bihar-South Konkan trough in the neighbourhood is loaded with implications for the neighbouring states of Telangana in the East and Chhattisgarh to the North-East.
The India Met Department (IMD) has forecast thunderstorms, gusty winds and lightning for Telangana, Rayalaseema, coastal Tamil Nadu, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry today. As for the rest, it has warned of heavy rain at a few places with very heavy to extremely heavy falls at isolated places over Konkan and Goa.
It will be heavy to very heavy at isolated places over Madhya Maharashtra and coastal Karnataka and heavy at isolated places over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Marathwada, South interior Karnataka and Kerala. An almost similar forecast is maintained for tomorrow as well, with rains likely to penetrate further into interior Maharashtra.