Monsoon takes a break in Bihar

Patna: The monsoon, which hastened its entry to Bihar a day before the scheduled date, covered the entire state by June 21. But after showers lashed the state for over a week, the monsoon current has now weakened. “The state will not receive any rainfall for the next four-five days as the monsoon trough has now moved towards west,” said state IMD director A K Sen here on Sunday.
The latest surge of June 20, the third since monsoon hit Kerala on June 9, carried the rain system into more than half of India in seven days, moving from north Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh into Maharashtra, MP, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bengal, Bihar, east UP and the northwestern hill states.
“But as of now, the usual progression of monsoon over the country has inverted, with western parts of the country getting heavy rain, while the eastern and north-eastern parts will mostly remain dry for the next few days. The system has weakened and the monsoon is unlikely to progress further in the next few days,” said Sen. He said several fresh systems have started taking shape in the Bay of Bengal, which may provide fresh impetus to the monsoon after Thursday.
“Much would, however, depend on their intensity, speed and direction,” he said. Drifting away of the monsoon current is a normal phenomenon, said IMD sources here.
“This is how the monsoon spreads across India. As clouds gather over the Indian Ocean and begin to move northward, two branches of the South West monsoon begin to form, one over the Arabian Sea and the other over the Bay of Bengal. Neither are active at the same time,” explained the IMD director.
When one strengthens, the other weakens and the monsoon progresses in pulses lasting from five to seven days across the two branches. The branch active at present is the western one, that covers western and northwestern India. At present, monsoon is vigorous all along the west coast on account of the active offshore trough right from coastal Gujarat up to Kerala.
And even after the monsoon has spread across India, as it is expected, the entire country will not receive continuous rain, Sen explained, but there will be alternate wet and dry periods depending on the formation of troughs, or pockets of low pressure, in different parts.