Dear John
  I enclose meteosat and Kalpana (indian sat) pictures for
16,17,18,19th of June. I belive on the 16th we see what Indian
meteorologists call the Off-shore trough-which is supposed to be
different from the ITCZ. It is generally parallel to the coast and has
embedded meso-scale systems in it. It is supposed to give a lot of
rains over the coast and the Western Ghats. This trough had persisted
for about one week and indeed a lot of rain occurred on the coast and
over the mountain range. But we in most of the peninsula got very
little. What you see subsequenly, is the development of a TCZ (which
has been unusuallly strong over the western Arabian Sea this year. Now
we hope to see a northward movement. I believe active spells of the
monsoon are associated with an intense TCZ stretching across the Indian
longitudes around 20N or so.
 Last year we had an observational expt with the aim of studying the
offshore trough, but it never appeared!
sulochana gadgil