Patna: Residents in Patna and other parts of the state can look forward to a dry weekend. The weathermen has claimed that but for some local rain at isolated places, the weather would remain more or less dry in the coming two days, Saturday and Sunday.

"There is no prevalent condition at present that could cause much rainfall in the state. The monsoon trough line too is passing through Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh, far south of Bihar," said an official in the Patna Met office.

The monsoon trough line is an imaginary line extending from west to east and rainfall generally takes place in areas falling south of this line. Giving reasons for southward movement of the trough line, the Met official said that a depression that had converted into a well-marked low pressure area had been hovering over southeast Madhya Pradesh for the past few days and sucked most of the moisture from adjoining areas and its westward movement led to southward movement of the trough line.

During the weekend, residents would have to bear slightly higher day temperatures, in the range of 34-36ºC, around 2-3º C above normal.

The Met official said since there is high moisture in the atmosphere, the high temperature level might lead to formation of convective clouds locally, causing some rain at isolated places during the weekend. He, however, said that chances of some favourable condition causing rainfall were there from Monday onwards. "A low pressure area is likely to develop over north Bay of Bengal from Monday onwards, which would lead to change in the weather pattern and some place in south Bihar may receive rainfall because of it," said the Met official and added that more places in south Bihar were likely to receive rainfall on Tuesday and Wednesday.

As things stand now, the state received 546.2mm of rain from June 1 to August 16, which is 18 per cent less than the normal rainfall of 665.7mm during the period.

In meteorological parlance, monsoon rain is considered to be normal if the departure from normal is 19 per cent or less.