Cyclone Tauktae may lead to heavy rain on Sunday
MUMBAI: A low-pressure zone over the Arabian Sea, which began to form on Thursday morning, is expected to intensify into the first cyclonic storm of the year for India’s west coast. Named Cyclone Tauktae, the weather system is expected to bring heavy rains to parts of Mumbai and Thane districts on Sunday, as it will pass by the Konkan region at a distance of 300 to 500km from the coast. The cyclone was named by Myanmar. Tauktae means gecko in Burmese.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) placed Mumbai and Thane under yellow category storm warning, indicating very likely chances of “heavy rain at isolated places”, for one day. Districts towards the southern leg of Konkan and Madhya Maharashtra (including Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara) have been placed under an orange category alert, indicating more severe weather, on Saturday and Sunday.
“The influence of the storm in Maharashtra is likely to subside after May 17 (Monday) as it would travel northwestwards towards Gujarat around May 18,” said an official with IMD’S regional forecasting centre in Mumbai. The official added the storm will not meet directly with the coast in Maharashtra, and that it may also delay the arrival of the monsoon along India’s west coast by a few days. However, they did not specify the exact influence it is likely to have on monsoons in Mumbai.
“Cyclone Tauktae is likely to become the first severe cyclonic storm in 17 years to travel so close to the coast of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa & Maharashtra. As per the IMD Cyclone e-atlas, not a single severe cyclonic storm managed to do so after May 2004,” Akshay Deoras, a meteorologist at the University of Reading, tweeted earlier this week. Deoras also said that in Maharashtra, most of the storm’s impact is expected along the Konkan coast in the form of wind damages to trees and weak structures. He said, “People must remain vigil and try to remain at a safe distance from hoardings, power lines, and trees.”