Port Blair, May 18: This year’s monsoon has reached the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal due to the Cyclone Amphan, becoming the first major milestone in its progress towards the country, which is expected to get normal rainfall this year.
“Although we will see Andaman and Nicobar islands and parts of the eastern coast experience some rain due to the deep depression in the form of the cyclone, this same phenomena also delays the onset of monsoon onto the mainland regions,” said M. Mohapatra, director general of the IMD to ET.
As per the IMD’s revised monsoon schedule, the first southwest monsoon wind was supposed to hit the Andaman sea on May 22, from an earlier date of May 20. Last year, the winds had advanced into the Andaman sea by May 20, but stalled there for over a week, delaying rains for the rest of the country.
“The date of the monsoon winds hitting the Andaman sea is also crucial to the onset of the monsoon wind because usually, we have observed that the monsoon starts in Kerala roughly 10 days after it reaches Andaman,” said a senior scientist at IMD. However, he said that this year, the cyclone has made that rule-of-thumb measurement difficult to follow, and will delay the onset in Kerala by a few days. (Source: Economic Times)
