The Hindu Business Line : Widespread rain ends dry spell in northern winter

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Thiruvananthapuram Feb. 11 True to forecasts, Northwest India and the plains witnessed the first spell meaningful rains of the ongoing winter with the incoming western disturbance `switching on' weather ahead of itself.

On Sunday, the causative disturbance in the form of a low-pressure area was still located over Central Pakistan and adjoining Rajasthan. During the preceding 24 hours, it had caused fairly widespread precipitation over the western Himalayan region, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Mr Jim Andrews of AccuWeather.com traced the system as a sweeping storm heading out from Iran and into Afghanistan and Pakistan. The storm was slated to unfold slowly over several days as the parent trough settled over the plains of eastern Pakistan and northern India.

The ensuing showery to steady rains will be widespread with thunderstorms yielding heavy downpours, Mr Andrews said. The US National Centres of Environmental Prediction (NCEP) estimated rainfall up to 500 per cent above the weekly normal (February 8-15) to fall across a wide swathe extending from western Rajasthan right up to the North-East.

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in its forecast on Sunday that the meteorological analysis suggested that scattered to fairly widespread rain would fall over the western Himalayan region and adjoining Indo-Gangetic plains over the next two-three days.

Rain/snow is likely at many places over Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal. Rain/thundershowers are likely at a few places over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and west Uttar Pradesh.

However, there will be a proportionate decrease in precipitation as the rain-head leaves the Northwest to the East and North-East. Rain/thundershower is likely at many places over east Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim; at a few places over Jharkhand and isolated over the rest region. Increase in rainfall activity has been indicated for Jharkhand, Orissa and Gangetic West Bengal from Monday. Rain/thundershowers are likely at a few places over north Rajasthan and isolated over south Rajasthan. Isolated rain/thundershower is also likely over Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Rainfall statistics for the season from January 1 to February 7 revealed that West and Northwest India continued to suffer from huge deficit of 90 per cent and above. But deep convection in the Northeast, where some surface heating was available, had caused thunderstorm to form and dump rains in the region over the last week or so.

The result was that the Nagaland-Manipur-Mizoram-Tripura (NMMT) region registered excess rainfall of 21 per cent, while Assam and Meghalaya had normal rainfall. But it was deficient in Arunachal Pradesh (-37 per cent) and sub-Himalayan West Bengal (-43 per cent).

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