THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JUNE 11
Sunday’s depression over the Bay of Bengal crossed the Bangladesh coast during the night and has since weakened, while trudging its way across the international border to park itself on Tripura.
The system will be the last before the monsoon takes a break after it made the onset on May 29 on Kerala coast. In the East, it has already covered Kolkata.
Customary lull
It is customary for the monsoon to go into a lull phase after running over almost half of the country during the onset phase.
Its progress has been mostly on par on the West Coast, though lagging slightly over East India.
The monsoon has delivered a surplus of 18 per cent rainfall for the country as a whole during the first 11 days of June (not taking the lead time of three days while making an early onset).
At least 14 Met subdivisions recorded ‘large excess’ (+60 per cent more than the normal); seven each recorded ‘excess’ (+20 to +59 per cent more) and ‘normal’ (-19 per cent to +19 per cent). Four Met subdivisions fell under the ‘deficient’ (rainfall of -59 per cent to -20 per cent) and ‘large deficient’ (-99 to -60 per cent) categories.
These fell under the geographies not covered by the monsoon except Lakshadweep and Assam-Meghalaya.
May miss date
The lull phase means that the monsoon will miss the June-15 dateline for coverage of Central India and entry into east Uttar Pradesh. North Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, too, would need to wait it out.
It will begin once the remnant of the Bay depression, now a low-pressure area, spends itself out over the North-Eastern States over the next couple of days.
Monsoon progress
On Monday, the monsoon entered more parts parts of Marathwada, Vidharbha, Chhattisgarh, some parts of Bengal and some more parts of Assam and Meghalaya. Its northern limit passed through Thane (including Mumbai), Ahmednagar, Buldhana, Amraoti, Gondia, Bhavanipatna, Puri, Kolkata, Sohra, North Lakhimpur, unchanged from Sunday.
Conditions are becoming favourable for its further advance into some more parts of Odisha, remaining parts of the North-Eastern States and some parts of West Bengal and Sikkim during next two days.
Likely revival
The India Met Department (IMD) said that ‘there would be no further advance of the monsoon during the following one week’ (until June 20). The next big opportunity for revival is from June 29/30 and into July, according to global model forecasts.
The 24 hours ending on Monday morning saw heavy to very heavy and extremely heavy rainfall over Konkan, Goa, Coastal Karnataka and Kerala; heavy rain over Madhya Maharashtra , Vidharbha and Marathwada.
Meanwhile, the IMD has forecast fairly widespread to widespread rainfall activity with isolated heavy falls along West Coast, the North-Eastern States, hills of Bengal and Sikkim until the weekend.
But rainfall over the rest of Peninsular India, Central and East India is likely to reduce further. Isolated to scattered rainfall is likely over these areas during this period.