The weekend is about to witness a flurry of western disturbance activity as a fresh one checked on Wednesday close on the heels of an incumbent retiring away from eastern Jammu and Kashmir.

India Meteorological Department (IMD) has spotted yet another system, third in the back-to-back series, waiting over north Pakistan.

This system could start affecting the western Himalayas from as early as Saturday, the IMD said in its evening bulletin on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the latest one present over Jammu and Kashmir and neighbourhood would affect western Himalayan region and adjoining plains during until Friday morning.

Global weather agencies had seen intense westerly activity over northwest India during the whole of this week without specifying the frequency of arrivals.

Meanwhile, the passage of the westerly systems has continued to induce the formation of localised weather systems which sit in judgement of weather over disparate points across the region.

Thus, the upper air cyclonic circulation over south Punjab and adjoining Haryana persisted on Wednesday evening.

TROUGH SPLITS

The southward upper air trough from east India has split into two, with the first one running down from Assam to north Orissa.

The other one originated from Madhya Maharashtra and looked over a region as far downstream to the south as south Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile, the fresh western disturbance is expected to start affecting the western Himalayan region mainly from Saturday onwards.

A weather warning issued by the IMD said that isolated dust storms or thunderstorms would occur over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, west Uttar Pradesh and north Rajasthan until Thursday evening.

Satellite imagery in the afternoon showed the presence of convective (rain-bearing) clouds over parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.

Low to medium clouds were seen over parts of rest western Himalayan region, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, West Madhya Pradesh, northeast and south peninsular India.

RAIN AND SNOW

A short-term outlook said that fairly widespread rain or snow would occur over Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh and scattered over Uttarakhand until Thursday evening.

Scattered rain or thundershowers would occur over the Northeastern States during this period.

Isolated rain or thundershowers may break out over Orissa, West Bengal, Sikkim, south Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

Isolated rain or thundershowers has been forecast over south peninsular India and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Isolated dust storms or thunderstorms may unfold over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, north Rajasthan and west Uttar Pradesh.

Maximum temperatures are likely to fall by 2 to 3 deg Celsius over the Indo-Gangetic plains from Friday.

An extended forecast valid until Monday (April 11) said that scattered rain or snow would occur over western Himalayan region and isolated dust storm or thunderstorm over adjoining plains of northwest India.

Scattered rain or thundershowers may break out over the Northeastern States and isolated over east and peninsular India.

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