Cyclone Gaja after creating havoc over many parts of Delta & subsequently interior places of districts like Dindigul, Pudukottai, Tiruchirappalli created a new history of sorts when hill stations like Kodaikanal & Munnar were witness to cyclonic conditions. Maintaining strong intensity despite its interaction over the mighty Palani Hills region of Western Ghats Cyclone Gaja managed to resurface as a Depression into Arabian Sea still retaining a lot of its structure.
Cyclone Gaja is surely worthy of a case study in terms of the overall dynamics, intensification close to coast, and its ability to hold its structure over land & mountainous terrain. Despite all this if there was one disappointment from this cyclone it was possibly on the rainfall front. Chennaities for sure have reasons to be disappointed about practically no rains from Cyclone Gaja though if one were to look at the rainfall numbers of yesterday places like Chengalpattu, Kelambakkam which are less than 50 kms from the city have recorded moderate to heavy rains. If Cyclone Gaja had not compacted much tighter than what was originally anticipated Chennai could have seen a very good spell of rains on account of this system.
Currently lying off the coast of Kerala as a depression Cyclone Gaja could indeed give a parting gift to Chennai before fading away as an influencing factor over the Indian Sub Continent. Creating right conditions for strong Easterlies it could bring some of the convection seen around Andaman Sea as rain bands towards coastal Tamil Nadu over the next day or two. This could mean isolated moderate to heavy spells of rains along the coast, parts of delta districts are getting heavy spells of rains at the time of this post.
With right conditions even Chennai could sneak in a spell or two in the next couple of days.