Northeast Monsoon 2016 continues falter as Rains stick to Low Latitudes

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Northeast Monsoon 2016 is pretty much confined to the low latitudes of Indian Sub Continent as Sri Lanka & parts of Extreme Southern Peninsular India has been receiving rains.  Pamban has recorded about 47 mm rains until 5:30 AM in the morning while neighbouring Ramanathapuram has recorded about 20 mm for the 24 hours ending today morning.  Parts of Ramanathapuram has recorded moderate to heavy rains today morning while most of Tamil Nadu was enjoying winter like conditions.

While South Tamil Nadu continus to get some benefit from Northeast Monsoon 2016 the same cannot be said for many places in North TN & Pondicherry.  Tiruttani about 80 kms to the West of Chennai has not even recorded 5% of its average rains from Northeast Monsoon as of 19th November.  It has recorded only 9 mm against the long term average of about 330 mm.

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Similarly Pondicherry has so far not even received 10% of rains from Northeast Monsoon 2016 against the expected average.  Things are similar in both the IMD observatories at Chennai with neither of them recording even 15% of the normal rains so far.

In an ironical twist, Tirunelveli (Palayamkottai) that saw possibly the driest Southwest Monsoons in recent times has recorded the best rains so far this year in comparison with the expected rains during the season.  Its no consolation though that even the best has recorded only about 60% of the overall expected rains so far indicating how bad things have evolved this Northeast Monsoon 2016.

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With the Trough of Low continuing to persist we could see another rainy day at a few places of South Tamil  Nadu while quite a few places in Sri Lanka could get moderate to heavy spells of rains.  Thanks to the broad nature of the trough it is struggling to consolidate into a Low Pressure Area.  IMD is expecting the trough to consolidate into LPA off the coast of Sri Lanka in the next 48 hours or so.