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Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, Dec. 26 Minimum temperatures continued to be below normal by 2 to 3 deg Celsius over parts of northwest, central and east India during the 24 hours ending Friday morning.

India Meteorological Department (IMD) did not expect any significant change in the situation over the next three days.

An exception could be the freak weather in the making over the northern fringes of Jammu and Kashmir in view of the arrival of a weak western disturbance. Fog conditions prevailed over Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. For a second successive day, Amritsar recorded the lowest minimum temperature of 2.2°C in the plains.

Rain or snow has been forecast for isolated places over Jammu and Kashmir, rain or thundershowers at isolated places over sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.

This apart, mainly cold and dry weather is expected to prevail over most parts of the country towards the end of the year early into the next, according to most weather models.

The powerful anti-cyclone with its core sitting to the west of the country may undergo some weakening going forward, but not enough to make any significant dent on prevailing weather conditions.

Some models indicate a late surge in easterlies over the southeast Bay of Bengal during the forecast period leading up to January 1, 2009.

But they could not confirm whether the easterlies would be able to go for it, aiming somewhere along the southeast coast of India. Incoming moisture is shown to float over west-central Bay and head south-southwest, presumably steered by the northeasterlies flanking the anti-cyclone.

In fact, the Global Forecast System model at the Climate Prediction Centre of the US National Weather Services signals northeasterlies (even veering at times to being north-south) fanning across the cool waters of the North Bay of Bengal.

Sea surface temperatures here have cooled down to between 23 and 26 deg Celsius, way below the threshold of 27.5 deg Celsius for ocean surface to support any system activity.

The pattern will hold until January 3, 2009, according to wind analysis by another model, with southern Sri Lanka suggesting itself as the likely region over which some moisture could be unloaded.

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