The late withdrawal of Northeast Monsoon this year, which continued until the start of the Tamil month of Thai meant the entire month of Margazhi normally associated with winter by many people in Tamil Nadu went away with warmer than normal minimum temperatures modulated by the stronger than usual Easterlies.
The overall drier conditions over Peninsular India for the past few days though has finally brought in a reduction in temperatures, particularly the interior parts of Tamil Nadu have finally seen the minimum temperatures drop to near normal and in many cases slightly below normal as well. While the interior places of West TN have seen a good dip in temperatures the North Interior TN places like Vellore & Tiruttani continue to see sub par winter though the coming few days promises to bring a brief winter type weather until weekend.
While Northeast Monsoon checked out late this year western disturbance continues to provide for dynamic interference over rainfall prospects for Tamil Nadu. North TN saw a good spell of rains during the first week of January due to the constructive interference from the dipping mid latitude trough, since then at least on one occasion weather models have estimated for similar interference to happen though eventually it did not pan out in real time conditions. Once again February 3rd week models show a case of western disturbance induced rains over parts of Tamil Nadu. We will cross the bridge when we reach.
But beyond looking out for weather events on real time basis during off season it is an interesting exercise to understand the patterns & also use the opportunity to share some learning as well on one of the many ways to observe, understand & infer how weather events could influence us.