While monsoon is already retreating from India, leaving most parts of the country dry, south India has been receiving continuous moderate to heavy showers.
“There are two troughs affecting peninsular India right now. The first trough can be seen extending from the Orissa coast to Tamil Nadu and the second one from the north Konkan to Rayalaseema. These two troughs are currently merging together and bringing rainfall over the region. Rain is expected to continue for at least a week”, says Mahesh Palawat, Head of the Meteorological team at Skymet Weather.
Figures show, many parts of south India received up to 20mm of rain, on an average,with more than 40mm of rain in many parts. Bangalore has received spot rain of up to 80mm in the last 72hours, whereas rain shadow city, Chennai, surprisingly received heavy rain of 74mm in the last three days.
Hunavar (70mm) and Mangalore (26mm) in Karnantaka and Kariakal (31mm) in coastal Tamil Nadu, are among others to record heavy rain.
“Heavy rain that occurred in Peninsular India, in the last few hours, was not so much because of the two troughs we talked about previously, but because of a cyclonic circulation, which formed in the Bay of Bengal. Though now this circulation has weakened entirely”, says Samar Chaudhury, another senior weather forecaster at Skymet Weather.
Latest weather forecasts suggest that rain is likely to continue in entire south India for couple of days. “Yes, as the two troughs merge together, rain will continue in south India for almost a week. It may reduce in intensity temporarily but may again pick up towards Sunday. Monday may witness some good amount of widespread rain, mainly along the Andhra coast, interior Karnataka and Maharashtra coast. Bangalore may once again receive heavy rain of up to 40mm, whereas Mumbai will also enjoy moderate showers of up to 15mm. The east coast of south India may receive light rain of up to 10mm due to persistent clouding, added Mahesh Palawat.
At present, rainfall figures in major cities of south India are above normal by over 20% on an average. So far Bangalore and Mumbai have received excess rainfall by about 16% and 14% respectively. Hyderabad, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram have received excess rain by 14%, 51% and 31%.
