Monsoon arrives in India
NEW DELHI: The monsoon arrived in Kerala on Thursday two days behind schedule and advanced into parts of the south Arabian Sea, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu, southwest Bay of Bengal, and remaining areas of the Comorin-Maldives area, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in a statement.
The arrival of monsoon, crucial to the country’s farm-dependent economy, is announced based on factors such as wind speed, consistency of rainfall, intensity, and cloud cover. It arrives in Kerala first before covering the rest of India by July.
IMD said over 60% of Kerala’s 14 key rainfall monitoring stations reported 2.5 mm or more rainfall over the last two days. It said the spatial rain distribution in Kerala remained fairly widespread during the same time.
IMD said the westerly winds have strengthened in the lower levels with speeds up to 20 knots. It added satellite imagery and coastal Doppler Weather Radars in the region suggested persistent convection (cloudiness). IMD said all these parameters were to be fulfilled for the monsoon onset declaration in Kerala. “Monsoon is likely to progress to remaining parts of Kerala, some parts Karnataka, parts of Tamil Nadu, Rayalaseema,
etc in the next two days. Monsoon flow is active,” said RK Jenamani, senior scientist, National Weather Forecasting Centre. “There are chances of a monsoon depression developing between June 10 to 12 over northwest Bay of Bengal. This is good news because such monsoon depressions help pull the monsoon current and entire east India may be covered with the support of the depression.”
On Tuesday, IMD said monsoon rainfall was likely to be normal at 101% of the long-period average (LPA) after two years of above-average rainfall. LPA is the average rainfall (88cm) recorded in India every year between June and September from 1961 to 2010.