The Hindu : Front Page : Monsoon sets in over Kerala a week ahead

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Sunday, May 24, 2009
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Monsoon sets in over Kerala a week ahead

P. Sunderarajan

- Photo: S. Subramanium

WAITING FOR MONSOON HERE: While Kerala had a taste of the monsoon on Saturday, Delhi was still reeling under a heat wave. Here is a young woman on a motorbike trying her best to stay cool.

NEW DELHI: The south-west monsoon has arrived. The India Meteorological Department declared on Saturday that the system set in over Kerala more than a week before the normal date of June 1. Kerala is the entry point for the monsoon into the mainland.

The weatherman said conditions were favourable for the strengthening of the monsoon. But its onward movement would be primarily on the eastern flank.

The system is likely to advance rapidly over the Bay of Bengal and cover the Gangetic West Bengal region and the north-eastern States over the next two days.

This, the weatherman said, was because a depression that currently lies over east-central Bay of Bengal was likely to intensify into a cyclonic storm. It is expected to move in a nearly northerly direction towards the coasts of West Bengal and Bangladesh during the next three days.

Asked about the prospects for the peninsular region, the weatherman said the monsoon had so far covered parts of south Kerala up to Kochi, and parts of Tamil Nadu up to Madurai.

The northern limit of the monsoon in the region may not move far beyond these two points during this first surge.

Experts said there was no cause for alarm for the peninsular region and beyond. “This is only the first surge. Let’s not forget that the normal date of onset over Kerala is June 1.”

In the annual forecast issued on April 17 for the season as a whole for the entire country, the weatherman had predicted near-normal rainfall, at 96 per cent of the long period average, with a model error of plus or minus 5 per cent.

Saturday’s onset is almost on the lines of those predictions. During the past 50 years, the earliest monsoon onset over Kerala was in 1960, on May 14. The most delayed onset was in 1972, when it arrived on June 18.

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