The incoming cyclonic circulation from the South China Sea is now navigating across the Vietnam coast to the South of Hanoi, and is expected to glide its way over Laos and Myanmar over the next couple of days into the waiting hands of the Bay of Bengal, where it would intensify as a low-pressure area.
The Bay has looked more like a graveyard for low-pressure areas in the recent past, but the incoming circulation has already been able to make its presence felt across India’s West Coast and adjoining interior Peninsula by plotting a heavy to very heavy rain regime over the past week and more.
Monsoon to intensify
This is forecast to further intensify as it develops as a low-pressure area in the Bay and crosses the Odisha-West Bengal and heads straight to the West across Central and adjoining East and North-West India with what looks like meteoric speed before landing in the North-East Arabian Sea by August 8.
The speed with which it would have raced away over land would have left enough latent heat and momentum on its trail that another system could likely form over the Bay there the same day. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), it could likely mark a different course from here.
It may dig a little southward to the North Andhra Pradesh coast from where it would cross land and orient itself towards West-North-West (unlike a straight line to the West in the previous case) and head to South Uttar Pradesh before being pushed by the westerlies to the Himalayan foothills.
To scale up from Monday
Give this context, the monsoon flow would strengthen further from Monday (tomorrow). Widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy falls is forecast over Konkan, Goa, Coastal Karnataka and the adjoining Ghat districts of South Interior Karnataka and isolated heavy falls over Kerala today (Sunday).
The intensity would further increase from Monday when Konkan and Goa may experience heavy to very heavy falls at a few places with extremely heavy falls at isolated places until Wednesday. A similar increase in rainfall is forecast also over Madhya Maharashtra on Wednesday and Thursday.
Heavy to very heavy is forecast over Coastal Karnataka and also from Monday to Wednesday. Widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy falls are likely over Odisha and Chhattisgarh while it would be heavy over Jharkhand and the plains of West Bengal mainly on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Trepidation in Kerala
Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are also likely to experience gradual increase in intensity and spatial distribution of rainfall during this period. Meanwhile, both Kerala and Coastal Karnataka enter the August with some trepidation given their tryst with the month both in 2018 and 2019.
One saving grace is that most of Kerala’s big reservoirs that got flooded over in 2018, the year of the Great Floods of a century, are filled to less than half of their capacities two years down the line. That may mean larger space for to hold the inflows from a reviving monsoon but doesn’t rule out landslide threats.
All the more so because the last week has already witnessed heavy to very rain along some of the fragile reaches along the Ghats in the hilly districts of Kerala where the vulnerable slopes may have already got soaked. A couple of minor landslips have already been reported in North Kerala last week.