Monsoon onset over Kerala may get delayed until June 4, says IMD

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The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said the southwest monsoon may enter Kerala three days late (typical error ±4 days) on June 4 while forecaster Skymet Weather has pushed the date another three days to June 7 (⍊3 ) days) after the previous hurricane Mocha Incoming flows were disrupted and critical seasonal moisture was swept towards Myanmar.

Mocha It made landfall over the coast of Myanmar on Sunday. business line It had reported on 10 May that the monsoon might be delayed by a few days following ring formation and rapid intensification. . At stake was its scheduled arrival over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the monsoon gateway into Indian territorial waters over the Gulf, around May 20.

Twin Hurricane Fabian

While IMD did not explicitly attribute the delay to MochaSkymet Weather referred to the double tornado Fabian Just south of the equator, which would take at least a week to clear. This storm interrupts the flows across the equator that normally help build monsoons. Apart from that, a large unfriendly high pressure area (cyclone) looms over the Arabian Sea.

Skymate said the standard deviation in onset over the mainland is seven days. In the past 10 years, the earliest arrival was on May 29 in 2018 and 2022, with the largest delay being on June 8 in 2019. Climate prediction system models indicate strengthening of transtropical flows and favorable sea conditions for an increase in the emerging monsoons around June 7. An interval of +/- 3 days is quite normal for the onset of weather activity along the Kerala-Karnataka coast and off.

Late on Myanmar

Meanwhile, Myanmar, the penultimate stop, announced on Tuesday that it expects the monsoon to blow over the southern parts by May 18, which is the outermost extremity of the expected onset window of May 13 to May 18. This delay is likely to be pushed forward as the monsoon plots to reach its next stop over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, followed by Sri Lanka.

Myanmar had submitted the schedule as follows: Southern regions during May 13-18. Delta (May 19-24); Central Myanmar (May 25-31) and Northern Myanmar (June 1-6). During this phase, the monsoon typically calls for the straddling Andaman and Nicobar Islands (around May 20) and Sri Lanka (May 25) before hitting mainland India along Kerala by June 1.

That schedule is unlikely to be met, according to IMD’s forecast released on Tuesday, since then Mocha He may have set the clock back a few days. Continuous rainfall from the cyclone cooled parts of the Bay of Bengal, but sea surface temperatures in the easternmost parts of the Andaman Sea, Martaban Bay and Gulf of Thailand reached 31 degrees Celsius on Tuesday.

Silent Bay of Bengal

None of the global models show the development of any sea-based system that could project flows over the Gulf to help emerge over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Maldives, the closest stopping point for the monsoons, predicted continued rains, scattered thunderstorms and large waves on Tuesday. A monsoon has not been officially declared over the southern atolls, but westerly to northwest winds have been reported to reach speeds of 21-37 km/h with near-cyclonic gusts of 72 km/h.