ANDHRA PRADESH, May 16 (NNN-PTI) – The persisting low-pressure area over the South-East Bay of Bengal and adjoining South Andaman Sea, concentrated into a depression over the central parts of the South Bay and further intensify into a cyclone over the South-West and adjoining West-Central Bay (equidistant from the North Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh coasts) by Saturday evening.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) maintained a track for the storm to the North-West until Sunday, and then a re-curvature to the North-North-East. Sea-surface temperatures are as high as 32 degrees Celsius over the West-Central Bay and along a narrow corridor leading to the Andhra Pradesh coast. The waters to both sides of it are cooler by only one degree Celsius, and the temperatures taper further towards the Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal coasts.
Meanwhile, the intensification of the low-pressure area in the Bay would almost coincide with the landfall of the typhoon and its resultant weakening. A remnant of Vongfong may enter the East China Sea and re-intensify, but would likely head away to the East-North-East. So this would likely leave the field open for the Bay storm to undergo calibrated intensification.
However, the sustained North-West track could bring the storm closer to the Andhra Pradesh and Odisha coasts, as per the wind profile outlook put out by the IMD. Some global models suspect that it may not get enough room to re-orient away to the East or North-East and could ram into the North Andhra Pradesh or South Odisha coasts. It would have committed itself too far into predestined track that Private forecaster, The Weather Company, an IBM Business, see would take it to within striking distance of the Andhra Pradesh coast (around Visakhapatnam) by Monday morning.– NNN-PTI
