Southwest monsoon arrives before time; likely to reach Kerala on June 1

Southwest Monsoon, on Monday, has arrived about a week earlier than its normal date of May 22 over the South Andaman Sea, Bay Islands and Southeast Bay of Bengal. In recent times, monsoon has been making an early appearance over this region, says a report by Skymet Weather.

According to the revised dates of monsoon onset, it arrives over mainland Kerala on June 1, after a gap of 10 days. However, there’s no correlation at all between the arrival over Bay Islands and gate way state of Kerala.

After having set in over the Andaman Sea, the monsoon is expected to reach Kerala with military punctuality on June 1, and get retarded or accelerated in between over Sri Lanka and Southwest Bay of Bengal, the report added.

The monsoon stream has mostly reached on or before time, except in 2018. However, further progress to arrive over Kerala had wide dispersion and included all possibilities — early, late and on-time onset.

The weather forecaster said that there is a time-tested set of objective criteria for declaring monsoon over Kerala, which include - rainfall, wind pattern ( direction, speed and depth) and outgoing longwave radiations.

However, for its arrival over the 1st entry point for the Indian sub-continent, Bay Islands, there are no such criteria for announcing arrival as the criteria remain largely subjective.