GUWAHATI: In a much-welcome news assuring relief from the unprecedented heat, the IMD predicted that the monsoon is likely to hit the Northeast by Saturday.
The Regional Meteorological Centre of the IMD in a media release stated that, with the monsoon set to make its arrival in Kerala on Thursday, the conditions are right for the southwest monsoon to further proceed towards the northeast region in the next 48 hours.
Although the southwest monsoon this year arrived over Kerala a week later the normal date of June 1, its date with the northeast is likely to be kept, sticking to the trend over the last five years.
The monsoon has been striking the NE region in between June 1 and 10 since 2018, usually arriving by June 5.
An extended period forecast by the IMD says that, light to moderate rainfall and fairly widespread rainfall, along with thunderstorms are likely to cover the Northeast region during the next two weeks, in the period between June 9 to June 15 and June 16 to June 22.
“Overall rainfall activity is likely to be normal to above normal over most parts of the region during these two weeks,” a Met office functionary said.
In the meantime, the IMD has issued a warning of heavy to very heavy rain in various parts of the northeast in the next five days. It is very likely for strong low-level southerly and southwesterly winds blowing in from the Bay of Bengal to bring in moisture to the northeast during the period, it said.
Under the influence of this progression, the IMD predicted that more or less widespread to very widespread rainfall activity coupled with heavy to very heavy rainfall, accompanied by thunderstorms with lightning and gusty winds is more than likely to happen over the region.
The IMD also issued a “yellow warning” for light to moderate rainfall occurring at several places, with isolated heavy rainfall and thunderstorm combined with lightning to hit isolated places over Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh on Friday. On the same day, the Met office has warned of light to moderate rainfall falling at most places, with heavy to very heavy rainfall in isolated places of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.
An “orange warning” has been issued for the four northeastern states, noting that thunderstorms and lightning with gusty winds of 30- 40 kmph are expected at isolated places on Friday. An “orange warning” issued by the met office is to convey an alert to “be prepared”, intended for disaster management agencies.
A spell of light rain in some parts of the northeast, including Guwahati on Thursday,failed to bring down the daytime temperature, which hovered two to seven degrees above the normal maximum temperature in most towns and cities.
Guwahati recorded a maximum temperature of 38.9 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, the second highest maximum temperature recorded for the city in the month of June.
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