Why the Monsoon Is Late This Year
Tasnim traces the monsoon from the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas, explains the land-sea temperature engine that drives it, and shows why a warm patch in the Pacific can delay rain in Dhaka.
How the Bay of Bengal Builds a Cyclone
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Show notes
Anatomy of a cyclone
A cyclone needs warm water, moist air, a spin from the Earth and calm winds aloft. The Bay of Bengal supplies all four, and its funnel shape pushes the sea onto low land. Tasnim walks through the formation step by step, then explains how warning systems changed after Cyclone Sidr in 2007 and what still goes wrong.
- The four ingredients and the 26 degree rule
- Why the Bay is shaped to make surge worse
- Reading a track forecast and the cone of uncertainty
- What changed after Sidr
- A fisher from Barguna on the signal flags
If you live on the coast, share which warnings reach you and which do not on the Witspeak channel.
Transcript
Welcome back to Monsoon Mechanics, I am Tasnim Rahman. Today we build a cyclone from scratch. You need warm water, and the Bay of Bengal is very warm. You need moist air, a nudge of spin from the turning Earth, and quiet winds high up so the storm is not torn apart. Give it five days and you have an eye. I will take you through each stage the way I watched it happen on the screens in Dhaka, and then explain the cruel geography that makes our storm surge worse than almost anywhere else. We will talk about Cyclone Sidr in 2007, what the warning system learned, and I have a fisher from Barguna describing the signal flags on his beach. This one matters. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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