Yesterday was a relatively quite day for Tamil Nadu on the rain front with isolated thunderstorms giving rains to a few places in the Delta & Pudukottai region. Manalmedu in Nagappattinam district recorded about 27 mm while Devakottai in Sivaganga district recorded about 22 mm rains till today morning. Similarly Senthurai in Ariyalur district recorded about 17 mm rains for the same period.
In a curious case of how much a miss the rains of the last few days have been for Chennai can be understood from the Precipitation Accumulation from the TRMM while places to the North, South & East of Chennai has seen very good rains over the last 3 days it is only the Coastal Tamil Nadu region around Chennai along with parts of South Coastal AP that has missed out on rains in the entire East Coast Stretch starting all the way from the Delta region to Machilipatnam in Central AP coast.
But in a case of Nature balancing are we likely to see this particular stretch of Tamil Nadu getting compensated, it appears so going by how models are estimating likely late evening / night thunderstorms for today.
In what is likely to be a case of pieces of jigsaw puzzle falling in at the right time and right place parts of North Tamil Nadu & South Andhra Pradesh could be a witness to possibly the first proper Southwest Monsoon Convective thunderstorm of the season. Lets see how the factors are expected to play today.
- Thanks to the Low Pressure Area that still persists off the North Andhra Coast there is a lot of remnant moisture around in the region. This is like a match stick that is waiting to be struck
- With slightly more clearer skies a fair bit of ground radiation could take place today around the interior places to the NW of Chennai lifting air particles bringing in an instability needed for the friction
- Late evening sea breeze is expected to be fairly strong and move inland which will create the necessary strike to light up the match stick bringing in the thunderstorms in the area around Tirupati / Tiruvallur / Nagari etc.
The winds are expected to be from NW which is likely to provide a decent opportunity for Chennai to get something from these expected thunderstorms. It appears West & Northern areas of Chennai could benefit from one or two heavy midnight spells. It will depend a lot on wind support let us hope the luck for once favours Chennai.