The last few days saw lot of Thunderstorm activity over Peninsular India including coastal places like Chennai, many parts of Chennai got rains accumulating to nearly 5 cms from the two early morning spells on Tamil New Year’s day and yesterday morning. To give a perspective the mean rainfall during the month of April for Chennai is 14 mm, so effectively parts of the city got nearly 4 times the average rainfall for the month. Similarly many places in interior Tamil Nadu too enjoyed good rains over the districts of Erode, Tiruppur, Coimbatore, Pollachi, Dharmapuri & Krishnagiri, while the usual suspects in South TN, Madurai, Dindigul etc also got good rains.
Any rain spell cannot continue for eternity particularly during off season times like summer, the conditions have to fall in place with various factors playing their roles to create perfect platform for thunderstorms to get triggered & subsequently develop. The remnant moisture brought in by Easterlies are often a very underrated component in this thunderstorm equation which is often forgotten by bloggers. The last few days saw Easterlies play its role nicely for thunderstorms to thrive, weather models indicate the dominant wind pattern to change from Easterlies to Northerlies bringing overall dry atmospheric conditions along with it. This is likely to reduce the rains gradually starting from today over Tamil Nadu.