The depression over East-central and adjoining Northwest and West-central Bay of Bengal remained practically stationary from overnight on Thursday. The system lay anchored about 550 km east of Visakhapatnam, 430 km southeast of Gopalpur and 400 km south-southeast of Digha. But India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in its evening bulletin that the system is likely to intensify into a deep depression, a spin away from being classified as a tropical cyclone.
AIMING ORISSA COAST
The storm is expected to stick to a west-northwest track and aim the Orissa coast between Gopalpur and Paradip for a landfall by Friday evening, the IMD outlook said.
Satellite cloud imagery revealed the presence of intense convective clouds over Northwest and adjoining Central Bay of Bengal and parts of East-central and Southeast Bay, the Andaman Sea, Orissa, Coastal Gangetic West Bengal and Southeast Arabian Sea.
A weather warning valid for the next two days said scattered heavy to very heavy rainfall would occur over Coastal Orissa. It would be isolated heavy over interior Orissa and coastal areas of West Bengal and North Coastal Andhra Pradesh.
SQUALLY WINDS
Squally winds with speed reaching 45 to 55 km/hr would prevail along and off the North Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal coasts.
The sea condition will be rough to very rough along and off these coasts during this period. Fishermen have been advised not to venture into the sea.
While maintaining the watch for development of a ‘significant weather system' in the Bay, the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC) said that a powerful band of northeasterly winds emerging from China could start ‘shearing away' the storm head on the home stretch.
The prevailing sea-surface temperature regime of 28 to 30 deg Celsius, however, continued to support storm development in the basin.
BUSY PACIFIC BASIN
Meanwhile, upstream to the east, things were busying up fast and furious over South China Sea and the West Pacific basins.
A tropical storm, Megi, has spun up over the West Pacific and was on Thursday heading further west and poised to enter the ‘boiling hot' waters off the Philippines.
Both the JTWC and the Tropical Storm Risk Group of London are of the view that ‘Megi' would ramp up to a Category-4 typhoon by the time it barrels into North Philippines over the next four days.
The powerful storm might wind down to Category-2 strength after encountering the land features of the Philippines but could start strengthening once again on entering adjoining South China Sea.
‘Megi' is expected to ram Southwest China and adjoining Indo-China with all its fury, and could likely send in a remnant circulation into the Bay of Bengal as well.
An IMD outlook for weather valid until Sunday said that fairly widespread rain or thundershowers would occur over North Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Sikkim and the Northeastern States.
Fairly widespread rain or thundershowers have been forecast over Kerala and Lakshadweep on Thursday.
Scattered rain or thundershowers are likely over Bihar, Jharkhand, East Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Coastal Karnataka and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. It will be isolated over Konkan, Goa and Tamil Nadu.
Forecast valid until Tuesday next said that fairly widespread rainfall would occur over Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Vidarbha, Madhya Pradesh and Northeast India.
No comments:
Post a Comment