Weak monsoon leaves questions unanswered in the South

After a productive run over North and Central India, the monsoon may be taking a deserved break but has left many questions unanswered in the South. Kerala, South Interior Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are still nursing considerable deficits.

The stakes are larger than imagined here since the deficit seems to have perpetuated a trend evident through the past three years or more.

The monsoon is preparing to enter the second half, in August, normally the second-rainiest of the four monsoon months.

If July, the rainiest, could not bring these Met subdivisions their due, one is not sure what August, with its seemingly inauspicious start, can deliver.

This could have implications for drinking water, irrigation and even hydel power generation, though not necessarily in that order, for each.

There is no sign of an organised revival of the monsoon at least until August 10, though parts of the South may receive the odd wet spell or two.

Tell-tale signs of a weak phase of the monsoon have emerged, not least because of the wind pattern in the Arabian Sea changing to north-westerly or even northerly.

The monsoon flows here are currently headed north-south instead of south-west, after an unfriendly high-pressure area formed over the South Arabian Sea.

A string of tropical storms and even a typhoon were waiting in the North Pacific to lap up the diverging flows and in turn growing in strength.

Of these, tropical storms ‘Nesat’ and ‘Haitang’ have weakened but ‘Noru’ has strengthened many times over to become a super typhoon.

The monsoon is likely to stay disrupted if no weather system forms in the Bay of Bengal to intercept these flows and divert them back to India.

No weather model shows any significant development except an odd circulation that may help sustain rain along the foothills of the Himalayas.

It is not yet known if the monsoon headed for the typical ‘monsoon break’, a condition marked by a prolonged shut-out of rains over most of the country.

The ‘break’ can occur in late July or early August but has to satisfy a number of meteorological conditions before being classified so.