Heavy rainfall in Tamil Nadu despite Cyclone Ditwah fading away

Cyclone Ditwah, which was supposed to bring intense rainfall to Tamil Nadu until Sunday, (30th Nov), has defied all predictions. While there were negligible rains in Chennai city and adjoining until Sunday, the system's remnants have brought significant amounts of rainfall to Chennai and adjoining regions between Monday and Thursday, (Dec 4). Notably, there was no advance warning or forecasts about the extremely heavy rainfall(over 21cms) that the system's remnants would cause in the ongoing week.

Despite the weather system(remnants of Ditwah) having significantly weakened through the course of this week, IMD has now forecast heavy rainfall for multiple districts of the state on both Thursday and Friday. "Heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over Vellore, Ranipet, Tiruvallur, Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Villupuram, Nilgiris, Ghat areas of Coimbatore, Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Tenkasi districts and Puducherry," said the IMD forecast issued for the dayat noon, Thursday. For Friday, IMD has forecast heavy rain for isolated places over Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Tenkasi districts.

As per IMD rainfall data shared on Thursday, many parts of Tamil Nadu have witnessed rainfall amounting to 6-24cms. Parts of Chennai city have recorded between 12-24cms of rainfall. This is despite the remnants of Cyclone Ditwah having weakened and moved away from the Chennai coast.

Cyclone Ditwah is being widely regarded as a weather system that has proven most weather forecasts wrong. Neither the Indian Metrological Department(IMD), not the private weather bloggers were able to forecast that the cyclone and its remnants would impact several parts of Tamil Nadu between 1stand 5thDecember. Initial forecasts had suggested that the system's impact would be virtually over by November 30th. The well marked low pressure area over North Tamil Nadu and Puducherry coast moved westwards and weakened into a low pressure area over North Tamil Nadu on Wednesday evening, following which it became less marked in the early morning hours of Thursday, IMD said in its latest report about the remnants of Cyclone Ditwah.