The last couple of days have seen increased thunderstorm activity over large parts of Peninsular India, in particular the southern parts of Peninsula. Yesterday saw Trivandrum record nearly 7 cms of rains in just an hour while neighboring Nagrcoil record nearly 5 cms in an hour. Though the last two days has seen Chennai miss out on thunderstorms its indeed satisfying that almost all of interior TN has got a spell or two over the last few days.
Over the past few days its interesting to see the wind patterns change or to be even more precise ebb and flow through the interplay of Easterlies & Westerlies. Also in the early stages thunderstorms were driven by lower level winds while the last two days it is slowly moving towards Mid tropospheric levels. In a different dimension today the wind charts indicate a pseudo Break in Monsoon type of wind pattern likely to prevail which could be good news for some of the coastal areas.
Weather watchers always keep a track of Pudukottai & Sivaganga districts during Break in Monsoon period as they tend to score a lot when the Westerlies slow down and gently waft through the Palakkad gap drifting E/SE. Today we are likely to see a similar scenario with Easterlies pretty much not to be seen over southern parts of Peninsular India & gentle Westerlies moving across. This is likely to trigger thunderstorms in the interior places but critically it appears some of the storms may move across towards the coast bringing moderate to heavy thunderstorm activity in a few places of South TN about 50 -100 kms away from the coast.
North TN & adjoining parts of Rayalaseema & South Interior Karnataka may see partly cloudy skies during the early part of the day due to the remnant overnight storms, will this play spoilsport for the prospects of Chennai on a day when storms may move towards the coast from interiors????