Rains in Chennai during the month of June while not being rare heavy rains in Chennai during June does not happen often. Yesterday though saw the second day of heavy rains in parts of Chennai. While on Monday both the observatories of Chennai, Nungambakkam & Meenambakkam, recorded good rains yesterday saw Meeenambakkam miss out with only 5 mm rains while the AWS in Nungambakkam recorded 50 mm rains.
The climatological average for the month of June (1971 – 2000) as maintained by IMD is 55.9 mm while the average over the last decade during the month of June is 72.2mm. The last two days has seen Chennai record more than 85 mm rains which is higher than the rainfall recorded for the whole month of June in 5 of the last 10 years. In terms of 24 hour rainfall as things stand yesterday is the highest since 2011 when 75 mm was recorded on 7th June 2011.
Extreme North & South Tamil Nadu enjoyed from rains yesterday with Kanyakumari district recording some very high numbers along with parts of Tiruvallur, Kanchipuram & Chennai districts. One look at the numbers also reveal how the storms evolved with North & Western suburbs getting the better rains while the Southern suburbs & OMR areas missed out.
Going by model outputs parts of Peninsular India is likely to see another heavy rainfall day with South Karnataka along with parts of Coastal Karnataka likely to see heavy rains under the influence of the UAC off the coast of Karnataka and aided by the strong monsoon surge as well. Similarly parts of Odisha, Coastal AP & Chhatisgarh could see heavy rains due to trough effect at upper levels. Models are indicating potentially rainy day for parts of West TN abutting the region around Karnataka & Rayalaseema and North Tamil Nadu around Vellore, Tiruvallur & Kanchipuram districts. While it is difficult to predict exactly the areas of impact during summer thunderstorms it is likely parts of Chennai could possibly see a 3rd straight day of rains today as well.
What is going to aid the thunderstorms in the interior region is the CAPE potential particularly around South Karnataka & Rayalaseema region which could trigger fairly intense thunderstorms under the right conditions. If the sea breeze comes at the right angle over North Coastal TN it could trigger good thunderstorms over that region as well.
In other news Southwest Monsoon has finally made onset over Arabian Sea with IMD confirming onset over parts of Sri Lanka and expected to move over Indian mainland in the next day or two
