” Dependable” – One of the Synonyms for Consistent as per Thesarus.com
“Erratic” – One of the Antonyms for Consistent as per Thesarus.com
Southwest Monsoon 2021 this year by the look of it has been consistently inconsistent that the erratic nature has thrown away the dependability of the Monsoon out of the window for many whose lives revolve around it. There are many rain fed agrarian regions in India particularly over Central India that has been hit by this trend that on the one hand while the region got cheated of regular rainfall periods provided by Monsoon Trough & associated Monsoon low movements over the region, on the other hand the season has been punctuated by sudden bursts of extreme rains bringing flooding episodes along with destroying livelihoods along with it.
The entire month of August has seen only 2 Monsoon Lows, one of which was possibly an Upper Air Cyclonic Circulation which masqueraded as a low pressure last week, while climatology says August normally sees 4 Monsoons lows that makes August as a critical month overall for Southwest Monsoon from the rainfall perspective. With 3 weeks of August gone & weather models indicating nothing major to change for the rest of the month we could possibly see August end with a deficit large enough that September, where we can start looking forward to the Monsoon withdrawal conditions kick in around middle of the month, will find difficult to compensate.
In the meanwhile thunderstorms are set to continue over Peninsular India though today we could see the storms move further West towards the interior areas of Karnataka & closer to the Ghats due to the weakening of westerlies over the region. This along with the Upper Air Cyclonic Circulation over southern parts of Peninsular India at Mid Tropospheric levels is likely to trigger rains over places along the Western Ghats & West Interior TN and adjoining areas of Interior Karnataka.
As the Mid Tropospheric Circulation moves East to West we are likely to seen an elongated circulation which will create East West Shear Zone type of conditions over southern parts of Peninsular India increasing the thunderstorm possibilities over interior areas of Tamil Nadu once again. This will also bring better prospects for Coastal areas like Chennai as well. All in All until month end things look good on the thunderstorm front bringing August as well to above normal for most parts of Tamil Nadu except for possibly the core Southwest Monsoon areas.