According to Skymet Meteorology Division in India, there are chances of good rain in Chennai in next 48 hours. This spell of rain will come as a big relief to the city observing poor rains since the last two weeks.
Tamil Nadu is a rain shadow area with very little rain being recorded in the Southwest Monsoon season. The Northeast Monsoon season from October to December is the time when the state receives its bulk of rain. But the current scenario does not look very good for Chennai.
The city in the last seventeen days has received only 24 mm of rain against the monthly average of 279 mm. The first week of October was completely dry, while the second week saw 15 mm of rain on the 8th of October, 4 mm on the 10th, 2 mm on the 16th and 3 mm of rain on the 17th of October.
Rain in Chennai is usually observed in spurts during the initial days of October. It becomes frequent after the actual onset of Northeast Monsoon around October 20 with ± 7 days. Thus, poor rains in the city does not necessarily mean that October will be a bad month for Chennai in terms of rainfall amounts. There is still fourteen days to go before the month ends.
But what is worrying is that the Northeast Monsoon is still not showing the characteristics of onset, which is widespread rain in coastal Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Though, we have seen some rain in these areas but they have not been that intense and widespread. However, we are still hopeful that Northeast Monsoon will pick up soon in the region and Chennai will inch closer to its monthly average rainfall.
