Red alert for Chennai, remnant of cyclone Ditwah stays close to coast

With the deep depression, a remnant of the weakened cyclone Ditwah, staying close to the Chennai coast in the Bay of Bengal, ared alert for extremely heavy rainfall for the next 12 hours has been issued to Chennai and the neighbouring Tiruvallur district on Monday evening, from Chennai coast is about 30 km and it is moving at a slow pace of 3 kmph, the Regional Meteorological Centre said in its latest update, adding that it is moving parallelly northward towards south Andhra Pradesh coast. Under its influence, the Tirupati and Nellore districts would receive heavy rains accompanied by squally winds upto 60 kmph, before the deep depression is likely to fizzle out gradually on Tuesday.

- STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE

A private weather blogger, citing strong cloud cover and moisture content which triggered the heavy rains, has predicted that the deep depression instead of weakening might possibly stay close to Chennai and the possibility of it intensifying back into a cyclonic storm could not be ruled out.