The West Coast is currently witnessing a rain fury with the monsoon cranking up a fresh spell as forecast by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and likely to last over the next 3-4 days. A facilitating offshore trough ran down from North Maharashtra to the North Kerala coast on Friday with two cyclonic circulations whirring away in the neighbourhood.

The offshore trough receives the incoming flows, which blast into the Western Ghats and are driven up to the heights to cool down and fall as torrential rain along the region. The convergence of winds is further amplified by the circulations over North-West Arabian Sea and South Gujarat. Gujarat, Konkan, Goa, Madhya Maharashtra and Coastal Karnataka are prominent beneficiaries.

The IMD had forecast isolated extremely heavy falls over Konkan, Goa and Madhya Maharashtra on Friday and Saturday; and over East Gujarat on Saturday and Sunday. Stations receiving significant rainfall (in cm) recorded during the 24 hours ending on Friday morning are Honavar-17; Mangaluru-15; Vengurla, Ratnagiri and Mahabubnagar-13 each; Shirali-12; Karwar-10; Harnai, Mormugao,and Kozhikode-5 each.

Good signs for North-West

If the truncated offshore trough (during a full-blown monsoon, it should extend from South Gujarat to Kanya Kumari) is holding it up along the West Coast, the land-based trough across North-West India is lying near to its normal position extending from Ganganagar (Rajasthan) through Narnaul, Gwalior, Sidhi, Daltonganj and Disha before dipping into the North Bay of Bengal.

This would allow the south-easterly monsoon winds from the Bay to fan into East, Central and North-West India and bring the monsoon bounty into an entire swathe of region. Not surprisingly, the IMD expects the trough to become ‘more marked’ over the next two days, after the trough westerly to south-westerly winds from the Arabian Sea and set up wind convergence over the region.

The trough coming back into the normal position also bristles with the possibility to stir up the Bay and emerge with a low-pressure area. Significantly, the IMD pointed to the presence of a rudimentary cyclonic circulation over the West-Central Bay of the Andhra Pradesh coast. What the south-eastern tip of the trough dipping into the North Bay is up to would be interesting to watch.

Heavy rains forecast

The presence of the trough lying diagonally across would bring fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls very likely over North-West India from Saturday to Monday, the IMD said. In the East, this trough is joined by a baby trough in a T from East Vidarbha to East Madhya Pradesh, potentially setting up a zone of intense thunderstorm and lightning.

In its outlook for Saturday, the IMD has forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall with extremely heavy falls at isolated places over East Gujarat Madhya Maharashtra and Konkan ad Goa; heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places over Uttarakhand, East Uttar Pradesh, East Madhya Pradesh, Saurashtra & Kutch, hills of West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam and Meghalaya while it would be heavy at isolated places over West Uttar Pradesh, East Rajasthan, West Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Coastal Karnataka and Kerala.

Thunderstorm accompanied with lightning and gusty winds (30-40 km/hr) is likely over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and East Rajasthan; with lightning over East Uttar Pradesh and at isolated places over Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, West Benga, Sikkim, Odisha, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rayalaseema, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Lakshadweep.

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