True to forecasts, the disturbed weather over the hills and plains of northwest India is expected to continue through the weekend.

India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in an evening bulletin on Thursday that isolated heavy rain or snow would occur over Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand on Friday and Saturday.

Over the plains, the weather would pan out in the form of isolated hailstorms or thunder squalls over Punjab, Haryana, north Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh during this period.

The week starting from March 11 would see a let-up in intense western disturbance activity over northwest India, according to the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction.

But this would also be the time around when the Bay of Bengal would get back into fresh churn and set up a rain wave right from the east to cause some precipitation over south peninsular India.

Meanwhile on Thursday, an IMD update said that the weather-setting western disturbance over Jammu and Kashmir would continue to affect the western Himalayan region and adjoining plains of northwest India on Friday and Saturday.

The westerly system has also thrown up an upper air cyclonic circulation over north Rajasthan and neighbourhood, which persisted overnight.

Towards the south, the upper air cyclonic circulation over southwest Bay of Bengal and adjoining south Sri Lanka has been persisting, too.

There will be some purchase for Kerala and Tamil Nadu from accentuation of the clouding associated with the system as it takes a round trip of Sri Lanka.

Satellite pictures on Thursday evening showed cloudiness starting to fill western parts of Sri Lanka and adjoining Gulf of Mannar. The clouding whipped up by the system had begun ducking below the peninsular Indian latitudes from Wednesday after being steered by the north-easterlies blowing across the Bay of Bengal.