Monsoon likely to envelop most of the country before July 15

The depression over the North-west Arabian Sea has remained stationary close to Masirah in Oman, but it has been instrumental in sustaining monsoon flows across the West Coast.

A number of places on the coast such as Harnai, Panambur, Bajpe, Ratnagiri, and Honavar continued to record heavy to very rain during the 24 hours ending on Tuesday morning.

Weather models do not expect further strengthening of the depression; it may loiter in the region for sometime and fade out off the coast of Oman in the next couple of days.

This would only lead to a calibrated scaling-up of a counterpart low-pressure area that has since crawled into India’s East Coast from the Bay of Bengal.

On Tuesday, the India Met Department located the system lying partly over the coastal areas of south Odisha and north Andhra Pradesh and partly over the adjoining Bay.

It will herald the monsoon’s entry into parts of Gujarat, east Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, west Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and west Rajasthan over the course of the next three to four days.

In this manner, most of the country will have been covered by the monsoon by this time ahead of the July 15-timeline, which is remarkable given that the onset over Kerala was delayed by eight days.

The surge in the monsoon will happen as the ‘low’ in the Bay spins in towards Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh before entering Rajasthan.

The expected arrival of a western disturbance into North-West India over the next few days raises the chance of interaction with monsoon easterlies from the Bay of Bengal.

Interaction of the two opposing flows has in the past generated sustained heavy rainfall. In fact, the US Climate Prediction Centre sees heavy rain drenching an entire arc from East to West between July 4 and 10.

Areas likely being covered are Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, East Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, East Rajasthan, Gujarat, Konkan-Mumbai, Coastal Karnataka and Kerala.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts too sees the monsoon in full flow from June 28 and July 7 when it is expected to peak again thanks to the formation of a fresh ‘low’ in the Bay.

Meanwhile, India Met has said in an extended outlook that the West Coast, Central and East India will witness rainfall at most places with the possibility of isolated heavy falls in the coming days.

The Indo-Gangetic plains and the North-Eastern States are also expected to come under a wet spell during this period.

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