CHENNAI: Ten days since the southwest monsoon officially touched the southern tip of south India, it has inched up only half the way toward the Vindhyas. The latest map supplied by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows the northern limit of Monsoon 2017 scything through about two-thirds of Karnataka and the balled fist of Andhra Pradesh.
Kerala and Tamil Nadu are fully covered, the latter state only notionally since it has little business to do with the southwest monsoon. Telangana and Odisha are beyond the pale yet.
Yet, Telangana has been having rains which, as per the Met’s quibbling, are pre-monsoon showers, not the real thing. Whatever they are, they have been good to the state, with the state capital Hyderabad receiving 110 mm so far, apparently 88 mm more than normal. The northernmost district of Adilabad has been well-served too, with 141 mm.
As for real monsoon precipitation, the Kerala has been well lashed so far and is in for a pounding of 7-11 cm in the next two days, the weather bulletin said. Fishermen have been warned about strong westerlies along the Malabar coast.
In Karnataka, the monsoon made touchdown last Wednesday, IMD director Sundar Mahadev Metri said, and would cover the whole of the state by the end of the weekend. The monsoon struck south interior Karnataka and coasts of Karnataka on Wednesday itself.
Most parts of southern and coastal Karnataka have experienced heavy rain up to 13 cm in the last couple of days, and climate change expert Ram Kumar said, “It looks good for South India this year. It’s the post-El Nino effect."
Weathermen weren’t so cheerful in coastal Andhra Pradesh though. The Rayalaseema region has been covered but rain clouds are giving the miss to the coastal districts and moving further east to the Bay of Bengal. So the state’s eastern sea board has remained largely dry and humid.
IMD officials said the clouds are likely to behave better in the next two days. Senior weather official K Naga Ratna said: “A low pressure area is forming over the coastal edge of Bay of Bengal resulting in a deviation of monsoon winds.
Saturday was Odisha’s formal date with the monsoon, but IMD said it’g going to take two more days. Although heavy rainfall has been predicted for one or two places over coastal Odisha in Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur, Puri and Ganjam, the real monsoon rains are a few days further off.