Heavy rain to lash east, south India till September 3: IMD

Even though monsoon currents are presently weak associated with the ongoing monsoon-break-like situation, the rains will continue over Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rayalaseema, north interior Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala till Friday. In monsoon-break phase, the rains largely remain restricted to northeast and southern peninsular India regions.

On Monday, some areas of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Bihar reported very heavy to extremely heavy (115 mm to over 200 mm in 24 hours) rains. Some of the wettest areas were Bhagamandala, Karnataka – 210mm, Rasipuram, Tamil Nadu – 200mm, Koraput, Odisha – 170mm, Mussoorie, Uttarakhand – 160mm, Jalpaiguri, West Bengal – 151mm, Konni and Ranni, Kerala – 110mm.

For the past two weeks, these two regions had remained largely dry with weekly rain remaining deficient by minus 33 per cent and minus 29 per cent over southern peninsula and east/northeast India, respectively. Manipur and Tripura have not recorded normal rain so far in this season whereas Kerala’s rainfall came under ‘normal’ category only last week for the first time in this season.

The Met department has forecast similar intensity rain over Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, east Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tripura, southern Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Manipur, Jharkhand and Mizoram during the upcoming five days. The upcoming rain spell will be triggered mainly due to the monsoon trough running along the foothills of the Himalayas. This besides cyclonic circulations, each, prevailing over Jharkhand and south coastal Andhra Pradesh. A trough runs from southeast Bay of Bengal till the cyclonic circulation over Andhra Pradesh.