The Hindu Business Line : `Low' in southeast Bay set to intensify

THE trough of low pressure enveloping the migrant easterly wave has overnight concentrated into a conventional `low' and lay over South Andaman Sea and adjoining southeast Bay of Bengal at 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday.

The system has a large area of organised deep convective clouds around it and has been travelling fast westwards, covering 400 km during the last 24 hours, said Dr Akhilesh Gupta of the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF).

Model predictions suggest that it is set to intensify after riding over the significantly warm waters of south and adjoining southwest Bay (around the 90E longitude).

The eminently suitable environs will help it sustain the intensity level within the confines of the pre-existing shear zone of monsoon turbulence.

Dr Gupta told Business Line that, given the limitations in which an easterly wave operated, the Bay system is not expected to intensify beyond the status of a well-marked `low'. Model prediction suggests that it may move in a westward direction towards the Tamil Nadu coast over the next two-three days.

It may cause scattered to fairly widespread rains in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala on Friday and Saturday in line with the predictions already made.

But what is probably prompting second thoughts is the fact that the system has lately tended to shift from a purely westerly movement to being slightly west-northwest, much in the lines of a depression/cyclone.

Such a movement would enable it to feed on the favourable warming anomaly to grow further and head northwest to make a landfall somewhere on the north Tamil Nadu/south coastal Andhra Pradesh coast.

But this is something that needs to be confirmed after closely watching the progression of the system in combination with the fluctuating dynamics of the immediate atmosphere within which it moved, Dr Gupta said.

In another interesting piece of information, Dr Gupta quoted from exclusive data made available by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre (BMRC) that predicted the formation of a tropical storm (possibly cyclone) in the Indian Ocean, which is seen impacting the peninsular coast between December 21 and 23. Dr Paul Roudy of the BMRC had earlier successfully predicted the formation of the two storms, `Baaz' and `Fanoos' in the Bay of Bengal.

Supporting the BMRC prediction is the forecast from the UK Met Office that a weak tropical storm taking shape around Bandung in Indonesia may travel the distance to reach the southeast Bay of Bengal as a weakened storm.

This could well re-emerge to set up what Dr Roudy says will be the next active cyclonic circulation in the region.

Meanwhile, the upper air cyclonic circulation over Lakshadweep and adjoining southeast Arabian Sea (`Fanoos' remnant) has become less marked.

In its forecast for the next two-three days, the NCMRWF said fairly widespread rains are expected over Andaman and Nicobar Islands, while it will be scattered in Kerala, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry.

Isolated rains are also expected over Rayalaseema, south coastal Andhra Pradesh and south interior Karnataka.

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