Saturday, March 13, 2010

Thunder squall threat to eastern, central parts

The wind confluence over central and east-central India has given rise to interesting weather pattern with India Meteorological Department (IMD) sounding an alert on possible thunder squalls over Chhattisgarh and Orissa during the next 24 hours.

Forecast for the next two days said isolated light rain to thundershowers would occur over Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and parts of south Chhattisgarh, north Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

ISOLATED RAIN

Isolated rain or thundershowers has also been forecast over extreme south peninsular India and the Northeastern States during the next three days.

During the 24 hours ending Friday morning, scattered light to moderate rainfall has been reported over central India and Orissa helping douse the searing heat to some extent in the region.

The chief amounts of rainfall recorded during the period were (in cm); Cuttack-2, Keongjhargarh, Nagpur, Amravati, Wardha and Pachmarhi - 1 each. However, the IMD has said maximum temperatures would once again start building gradually over central and east India during the next two days.

WEST TO HEAT UP

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has maintained the view that the northern flank of the heating caravan is set to move to the west of the peninsula while keeping the southern flank pinned to the peninsular region reaching down to north Kerala.

This would mean that the west coast and west-central India, including Mumbai-Konkan, south Gujarat and coastal Karnataka, would start heating up during the next week.

A high-pressure area with hot sinking desert air building over West Asia and pushing towards extreme northwest India would only help entrench the heat.



The ECMWF has retained the outlook for a western disturbance barely making it past the advancing high-pressure region to lob a circulation back into east-central India.

This is despite it being forced to make a detour and march across the extreme north of the subcontinent. The cyclonic circulation is shown to linger around the region until March 20 before weakening, which would once again bring the ‘top heat' back to east-central India.

Meanwhile, a slight fall in minimum temperatures has been indicated over parts of northwest India during the next three days. Strong northwesterly to westerly winds would prevail over the Indo-Gangetic plains during this period.

Satellite imagery on Friday showed the presence of convective clouds over parts of central India. Low to medium clouds (partly cloudy conditions) were seen over parts of northwest and east India and Arunachal Pradesh.

The South Andaman Sea also has been witnessing some clouding over the past few days as part of a weak easterly wave. Clouds have also massed around over southeast Arabian Sea off Sri Lanka and Kerala.

On Thursday, maximum temperatures were above normal over many parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarkhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat, the west coast, coastal Tamil Nadu and parts of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.

An agro-met advisory issued by the IMD said farmers should apply need-based irrigation to standing crops since there has been no significant rain in most of the States during the last week. Nor is any significant rain likely to occur during next five days as well.

Given the favourable weather conditions, the IMD assessed that chances of pest and disease incidence are high in the entire northwest, Maharashtra and Assam

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