With Southwest Monsoon officially coming to an end On September 30, the conditions have now become favorable for setting in of Northeast Monsoon.
The winds are soon likely to change their direction and start blowing from the east which would lead to rains over Kerala. However, due to these easterly winds, little depletion of moisture takes places when the winds move inland. Therefore, the state does record good rains during the season but lesser than the Southwest Monsoon.
In wake of this, Kerala has already started recording rains of varying intensity. Since the last couple of days, the state of Kerala has been receiving good rainfall activity on account of the cyclonic circulation over Sri Lanka and adjoining Southwest Bay of Bengal.
Along with this, at present, ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) is also lying close to the equator, with series of embedded cyclonic circulations, moving from east to west direction.
Thus, some rains have been seen for the last two to three days. In fact, in the last 24 hours from 8:30 am on Monday, Karipur saw 15 mm of rains, Kochi 8 mm, Kozhikode 7 mm, and Palakkad 3 mm
Thus, we can say that due to the effect all these weather systems, rains are likely to continue over Kerala and enhance further. In fact, from October 4, rainfall activity is likely to increase substantially over the state as heavy to very heavy rains are expected.
Further, around October 6, the cyclonic circulation is likely to get more marked and induce a well-marked low-pressure area over Arabian Sea in close proximity of Kerala. During that time, we expect exponential increase in rainfall activity and extremely heavy rains are expected to occur during that time.
Post Southwest Monsoon, the following next three months i.e. October, November and December are the post Monsoon months or the Northeast Monsoon season.
Even though the onset of Northeast Monsoon is officially marked during the second half of October, but the rain count begins from the beginning of this month. Thus, we can say that we have almost entered the Northeast Monsoon season that lasts till December 31.
The month of October is also the core month of Northeast Monsoon season as the most amount of rain is recorded during this month. In fact, the normal rainfall for Kerala during the month of October is 292.2 mm, followed by November at 150.9 mm and December being the least rainy at 37.5 mm.
Image Credits – Lonely Planet India
Please Note: Any information picked from here must be attributed to skymetweather.com
