Break in Monsoon as a phenomenon is being discussed about for nearly 140 years now. Henry Willaims Blanford, the first official meteorologist of India in the year 1886 had identified these large intra seasonal oscillations as ‘during
the height of rains’ and ‘intervals of drought’. While the early days of these oscillations were identified through surface charts, Koteswaram through his study brought in another interesting factor to identify breaks in monsoon, Tropical Easterly Jet (TEJ), the breaks were characterized by the strong southward shift of TEJ during the break periods. Sulochana Gadgil & P V Joseph through their studies identified the performance of Indian Summer Monsoon is negatively correlated with the number of break periods & Rain Break Days signifying the importance of these oscillations.
For the Chennai Weather Bloggers though break in monsoon periods are eagerly looked for as it allows them to track the thunderstorms that pick up over Peninsular India as the Monsoon Westerlies slow down allowing for atmospheric instabilities to trigger thunderstorms. It is interesting to note August sees the highest average break in monsoon periods which is ironical considering July & August are the most active phases of Monsoon as well. A classic YoYo rollercoaster without doubts.
Yesterday around midnight Chennai & suburbs saw moderate to heavy rains at many places that continued well into the morning bringing cheer to not only the weather watchers but public as well who were eager to see some rains after a spell of fairly hot weather in the preceding days. While pseudo break like conditions were providing conducive conditions for thunderstorms over the last week or so though Chennai had to wait till yesterday for a fairly widespread spell the upcoming break in conditions for the next week could bring once again thunderstorms to interior Tamil Nadu starting today which is expected to peak around Thursday / Friday before things slowly swing back towards the west coast.