Monsoon to hit state today: IMD

KOCHI: Heavy to very heavy rainfall in several parts of the state on Monday set the tone for southwest monsoon, which the Indian meteorological department (IMD) had predicted to arrive in the state on Tuesday.
The weather department said that the southwest monsoon has further advanced into some parts of south Arabian Sea and Maldives-Comorin area. Conditions are favourable for further advance of the monsoon into some more parts of south Arabian Sea.
Fishermen have been advised not to venture into the sea off Kerala, Karnataka coasts, Lakshadweep area and Comorin area till Wednesday.
“The conditions are conducive to further advancement of southwest monsoon into remaining parts of south Arabian Sea and some parts of central Arabian Sea during the next two-three days. We might declare the monsoon onset tomorrow after looking at the different parameters,” said IMD director K Santosh.
Meanwhile, private weather forecasting agency Skymet Weather declared the arrival of the southwest monsoon on Monday. They had predicted the onset on May 28. According to their weathermen, all the criteria required for declaring the onset of monsoon over the Indian mainland have been met.
The three main criteria of rainfall, wind field and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is all in place.
“If after May 10, 60% of the pre-decided 14 stations such as Minicoy, Amini Devi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kannur, Punalur, Kollam, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Kochi, Thrissur, Kozhikode, Thalassery, Kannur, Kudulu and Mangaluru report rainfall of 2.5mm or more for two consecutive days, the onset over Kerala be declared on the second day provided the following criteria are also in concurrence,” a skymet release said.
On Monday, most places in Kerala and Lakshadweep experineced rainfall. Amini (Lakshadweep) reported an isolated extremely heavy rainfall of 26cm. Heavy rainfall was reported from Agathi (Lakshadweep) -11cm and Konni (Pathanamthitta) -7cm. Other places which reported heavy rainfall included Nilambur & Manjeri (Malappuram), Vaikom (Kottayam), Nedumangad (Thiruvananthapuram) and Chengannur (Alappuzha), which recorded 5cm rainfall each.