Expect normal NE monsoon: Met dept

Director General of Meteorology Ajit Tyagi on Thursday said the north-east monsoon in Tamil Nadu this year was likely to be normal.Talking to mediapersons after inaugurating the High Performance Computing System at the meteorological department office here, Tyagi said the north-east monsoon in Tamil Nadu this year was likely to be "normal or slightly above normal". Asked when the monsoon would set in, he said the likely date would be October 20, going by the average dates of monsoon for the past 100 years. "We expect some weather-related activities in the east coast from October 15 itself," he said. S R Ramanan, director, Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, said the monsoon had set in on November 2 in the past. Responding to a query on why temperatures are high even after the first week of October, Ramanan said: "If the sky is clear in the morning, then the day will be hotter. This need not be confused with global warming." He further said the temperature goes up due to three reasons - air pollution, urbanisation and global warming and this particular case could be attributed to the first two reasons. Ramanan said the south-west monsoon was normal by and large and only in certain districts there was a difference in the amount of rainfall.