Heavy rain, snow to sustain over Jammu and Kashmir

Widespread rain or snow has been reported from Jammu and Kashmir and scattered over Himachal Pradesh during the 24 hours ending Sunday morning.

The causative western disturbance, an ‘active' one, also brought isolated rain and thundershowers over Punjab, an India Meteorological Department (IMD) update said on Sunday evening.

WEATHER WARNING

A weather warning issued by the IMD said that heavy to very heavy rain or snowfall would unfold at a few places over Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The heavy to very heavy rain or snowfall belt would move later to Uttarakhand.

Isolated thunder squalls and/or hail are likely to occur over Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan on Monday and Tuesday and subsequently over Delhi and west Uttar Pradesh.

A few international models suggested that the outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) would stay negative, indicating cloud presence, over many parts of the country going into March first week.

EASTERN RAINS

This could mean sustained westerly activity over northwest India, which some forecast models have already gone on record saying would continue through most part of the rest of this month.

European Centre for Medium Term Weather Forecasting is foremost among them, with the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction seeing rains breaking out over eastern India and the east coast during the week ending February 20.

There is the likelihood of a follow-up western disturbance intervening and helping sustain these rains over a wide geography from Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Northeast, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Vidarbha, Telangana, Rayalaseema, south interior Karnataka, interior and south Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

IMD VERSION

But an IMD forecast said scattered rain or thundershowers would occur over Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the North-eastern States during this period. This is most likely to happen as a Bay of Bengal weather system drifts in from Sri Lanka and interacts with the westerlies dipping over east India.

Meanwhile, minimum temperatures have risen to above normal by 4 to 7 deg Celsius over many parts of northwest and central India.

CONVECTIVE CLOUDS

The lowest minimum temperature touched double-digit figures at 10 deg Celsius recorded at Sikar in Rajasthan in the plains of the country.

Satellite picture on Sunday afternoon showed the presence of convective (rain-bearing) clouds over many parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and parts of Uttarakhand, Punjab and south Bay of Bengal.

Forecast until Wednesday said that widespread rain or snowfall would occur over Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.

Fairly widespread rain or snow would occur over Uttarakhand on Monday and Tuesday and increase thereafter.