After a brief hiatus, rain made a comeback in Chennai on Friday with intermittent showers.
The IMD has forecast that coastal parts of the State and Puducherry will get rainfall over the next three days due to the low pressure area over the southwest Bay of Bengal.
An associated cyclonic circulation, extending up to 5.8 km in the atmosphere, is likely to bring fairly widespread rainfall over the coastal districts wherein about 75% of the weather stations would record showers, Met officials said.
Chennai too will experience a few spells of rain or thundershowers, which may be heavy at times, till Sunday. On Friday, the murky sky brought down the temperature to 28.2 degree Celsius, which is nearly two degrees less than usual, in the city. Several parts received sporadic rainfall. The weather stations in Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam recorded within 1 cm of rainfall till 7 p.m. on Friday.
S. Balachandran, Director, Area Cyclone Warning Centre, said the low pressure area, which was stationed near the southeast Bay of Bengal on Wednesday, moved rapidly and was now at southwest Bay of Bengal. But the system is mostly over the ocean and this would have only fringe effect over the State. Coastal districts, including Nagapattinam, Pudukottai and Cuddalore, would experience moderate rainfall up to 3.5 cm.
While one or two places in the coastal areas may get heavy rainfall, some other places in the interior districts may register some rain.
“Whatever the districts in the Western Ghats region receive during the next few days would only be due to local thunderstorm activity not because of the weather system. We are monitoring it for further development, on which the intensity of rainfall over the State would depend,” he said.
For the next two weeks, the India Meteorological Department has forecast a probability of an intense low pressure system, which could either be a depression or a cyclonic storm over the Bay of Bengal between November 15 and November 23.
However, officials note that the weather models are being monitored for such a development.