The newborn ‘low’ over the north Bay of Bengal and adjoining Gangetic West Bengal and the Odisha coasts stayed put overnight, and is awaiting a round of strengthening.

It will cause a belt of heavy to very heavy rain to move west across Odisha into central India even as it gathers intensity.

Heavy rain

Initial forecasts suggest that the system will preside over the very heavy rainfall regime till Wednesday, but run into a bump somewhere over west Madhya Pradesh.

It may begin to let off steam, start weakening on Thursday, and merge into the monsoon trough over the plains of the northwest and become insignificant in the process.

This is also around the time when typhoon Matmo over the northwest Pacific would hit the southeast China coast (after an earlier rainfall over Taiwan) and start weakening there.

The two events coincide with a brief weakening of monsoon flows both in the northwest Pacific and at home here in the Arabian Sea/Bay of Bengal.

Fresh activity

The proceedings are forecast to get a fresh lease of life in the Bay of Bengal by Saturday, when a fresh low-pressure area develops off the Odisha-Andhra Pradesh coast.

This would be the fourth in the current series of ‘lows’ in the Bay, which have catapulted the monsoon to a high not witnessed before in the current season.

This ‘low’ is expected to cajole the monsoon trough back over the plains to lie along its normal axis and fuel rains over central India, north peninsula and the west coast.

Alongside, the northwest Pacific would also get into action, lobbing in a fresh ‘low’ shown as moving west towards the Philippines.

If the system were to maintain this track and gather strength in the process, it could help the Indian monsoon as was the case on the two previous occasions.

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