Monsoon winds pause, but seen reviving

Monsoon winds in South Asia have not advanced since last Friday after an early arrival in the region, but the vital June-September rainfall is still expected to be normal, weather scientists said on Tuesday.

Monsoon winds in South Asia have not advanced since last Friday after an early arrival in the region, but the vital June-September rainfall is still expected to be normal, weather scientists said on Tuesday.

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The monsoon rains, vital for farm output in India's trillion-dollar economy, reached the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on May 17, two days before normal, before moving to many parts of the Bay of Bengal in the following week.

But cyclone Laila on India's east coast last week decelerated the progress of the monsoon, which is forecast to hit India's southern coast on May 30, officials said.

"There may be some impact on the onset of monsoon on India's mainland, but there is enough time for the monsoon system to recover after the cyclone," a top official of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), who did not want to be identified, told Reuters.

The Indian government is counting heavily on good monsoon rains after last year's drought that led to a sharp and sustained rise in food prices and consequent public protests.

In neighbouring Sri Lanka, monsoon rains lashed the island's southern coast on May 22, but did not gain momentum after the onset, S.H. Kariyawasam, director, operational meteorology in Sri Lanka's weather office, told Reuters by telephone.

He said monsoon rains normally reach Colombo by May 25, but the Sri Lankan capital was still waiting for the season to begin.

"We are expecting a delay of one to two days from the normal date of arrival in Colombo," he said.

D. Sivananda Pai, director of IMD's National Climate Center at Pune, said the average time lag between the advance of monsoon rains from Colombo to India was seven days.

Last week, the head of India's weather office, Ajit Tyagi, said scientists were assessing the impact of cyclone Laila on the monsoon.

The U.S.-based forecasting firm, Weather Trends International, said the cyclone may reduce rainfall during seven days from May 24.

"Last week's devastating Cyclone (Laila) may have taken some of the moisture that would have arrived this week," it said in a note on Monday.