Wind holds back rain in Bengal - Monsoon likely to be subdued for 3-4 days

TT, New Delhi, June 26: More than half of Bengal's weather stations today recorded maximum temperatures 3.1°C to 5°C above normal under cloud-free skies and a lull in the monsoon just a week after its advance across Bengal and Bihar.

Weather scientists said wind and moisture conditions were likely to keep the monsoon subdued over these parts of eastern India over the next three to four days as they drive rainfall over southern Odisha and northern coastal Andhra Pradesh.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had declared the monsoon's advance across Bengal and Bihar between June 17 and June 19, amid a bout of rainfall in parts of both states.

"But today, both states had largely cloud-free skies and hot weather," said a scientist at the IMD headquarters in New Delhi. "We have a low pressure area in the west central Bay of Bengal that is pushing moisture towards southern Odisha and northern coastal Andhra Pradesh - that is where we expect rainfall over the next two or three days."

"When that (low pressure) system dissipates, we expect the winds to change direction and bring in fresh moisture and fresh rainfall over Gangetic Bengal and Bihar," the scientist said.

A bulletin issued by the IMD this evening said the maximum temperatures today were between 3.1°C and 5°C above normal in "many" places over Bengal and Odisha, implying that 51 to 75 per cent of weather stations in these regions marked these highs.

In the week from June 16 to June 22, Bengal received 34 per cent lower rainfall than the normal expected during this week of the monsoon. Scientists say the monsoon activity will pick up as winds and the monsoon axis shift to draw in moisture over Gangetic Bengal and Bihar, but not before June 30.

The four-month monsoon season from June through September is marked by what weather scientists call intra-seasonal variability, or periods of high rainfall activity and breaks in rainfall activity.

Such active and break cycles are typically distributed unevenly through the season and across the country. While Bengal and Bihar today experienced unusually hot and dry weather, the monsoon rains advanced further into parts of the northern Arabian Sea, southern Gujarat, eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan.

The maximum temperatures were 3.1°C to 5°C below normal in coastal Andhra Pradesh and parts of Tamil Nadu, and to 3°C below normal along the west coast of Konkan and Goa.

However, large parts of Jharkhand, eastern Madhya Pradesh, the northeastern states, eastern Madhya Pradesh and Punjab recorded maximum temperatures of 1°C to 3°C above normal. A weather station in Ganganagar, Rajasthan, recorded the 46.3°C, the highest temperature in the country.