Since the turn of the week Southwest Monsoon has been active over Peninsular India with many places in the region getting moderate to heavy rains. These rains have been characterized by intense bursts of rains during late evening / night as many places have witnesses rainfall rates in excess of 5 cms an hour. Hosur got about 7 cms in one hour on Monday and followed up with about 8 cms in one hour once again yesterday. The rainfall pattern shows a very unlike Monsoon type of rains resembling more like the pre monsoon summer thunderstorms rather than the typical monsoon rains.
Possibly aided by being at a slightly elevated altitude thanks to the Deccan Plateau South Interior Karnataka, Rayalaseema & NW Tamil Nadu has possibly got the most intense spells of rains this week. Just as the interior places seem to record heavy to very heavy rainfall, coastal areas along the East have been seeing less rainfall with the area around Chennai possibly the only region not to see any rains during the last 3 days going by the precipitation estimate maps by TRMM – NASA along with South TN
Yesterday also saw many places in interior Tamil Nadu enjoy a good day of rains, as mentioned above Hosur saw localized flooding due to second consecutive day of Cloud Burst conditions. In addition to parts of Krishnagiri, other districts like Karur, Virudhunagar, Theni & Madurai also saw rainfall in many places with a couple of places along the Western Ghats in Virudhunagar district enjoying heavy rainfall last evening. The pattern once again has been skewed towards the interior regions with districts like Chittoor, Cuddappah etc of Rayalaseema region also seeing fair share of rainfall.
Today is likely to be another day of possible rains for the interior places of Tamil Nadu with light to moderate showers expected at many places. One or two places in Western Tamil Nadu around Erode / Tiruppur region could get isolated heavy thunderstorms while parts of Interior Karnataka & Rayalaseema region of Andhra will see another day of intense thunderstorms.
Chennai could see cloudy weather in the morning with possibly one or two spells of passing showers along the coast but things are expected to clear as the day progresses with temperature settling around 33 degrees. The chance for rain though depends a fair bit on the movement of thunderstorms with unfavorable wind pattern indicated by the weather models