http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/07/28/stories/2005072802440900.htm

Is Konkan belt next on the hit list?

Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram , July 27

THE deluge in Mumbai on Tuesday that saw a record breaking 94.4 cm of rain swamp
the international airport and the neighbourhood has been attributed to the
formation of a monsoon vortex, a destructive feature associated with the most
active phase of the monsoon.

July normally brings good precipitation to the country's financial capital, but
Tuesday's inundation was of a scale unprecedented in the history of urban India.
The highest rainfall recorded in Mumbai till now was 37.5 cm on July 5, 1974.

Speaking to Business Line, Dr Akhilesh Gupta, Director of the National Centre
for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), said monsoon vortices are strong,
circular-moving and comparatively short-lived systems embedded in the prevailing
monsoon trough. But they can trigger a cloudburst within an area, extending to
as much as 30 km.

In meteorological parlance, these are tiny components of a very strong and
elaborate monsoon system. They are very unpredictable and mostly escape the
notice of the best weather models.

Vortices are formed when the strength of the westerlies blasting into the
natural barrier offered by the Western Ghats in the Konkan belt does not allow
them to align along the elongated offshore trough and instead, cause them to
rotate around their own axis with such intensity as to trigger a drencher.

The stronger the westerlies, the more intensively active will be the vortex and
the more destructive will be its impact. According to Dr Gupta, the Konkan belt
might not have seen the last of the vortices yet, given the strength of the
prevailing monsoonal flows. Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting when
and where they can take shape.

For instance, it was one of these offshore vortices that had dumped rain in
parts of Goa two days back, he said.

In any case, the ongoing rain activity in and around Mumbai would continue for
some more days but not in the same intensity.

The reason is that the dynamics associated with the atmosphere do not allow for
the sustenance of vortices of such forceful motion beyond 24 hours. On
Wednesday, the low-pressure area was positioned over east Madhya Pradesh and the
neighbourhood.

This means that the rain activity would now get shifted to the north Konkan
region and south Gujarat over the next few days.

Gujarat can expect to get heavy rain from the west-northwest orientation of the
`low' and the circulation pattern over the north east Arabian Sea, which has not
yet evolved into a full-scale mid-tropospheric cyclone.South east Rajasthan can
also hope for some good showers over the next few days.

The offshore trough running from the Konkan belt to Karnataka is likely to
persist for the next 2-3 days and the ongoing widespread rainfall activity over
the north Konkan region and South Gujarat region is likely to continue.

Fairly widespread rainfall activity is likely over coastal Karnataka, north
Interior Karnataka, Telangana and coastal Andhra Pradesh. 

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