The last full week of the month and the year is likely to see contrasting weather develop to both sides of the Vindhyas.

The biting cold and thick fog in north India will be matched by a late-in-the-season burst of showers to the south as a steaming southwest Bay of Bengal gives way.

AREA OF MISCHIEF

The US Climate Prediction Centre has already notified a potential area of mischief extending from the Philippines eastward to Sri Lanka.

A series of disturbances in this stretch of sea has brought odd showers for Tamil Nadu and Kerala over the past few days.

The US agency as well as the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts now sees the churn reaching a crescendo later this week.

The European Centre sees a full-fledged low-pressure area evolving and later intensifying before it enters central Bay of Bengal.

This forecast says that the system may be driven away towards north-northeast to a likely landfall over the Gangetic West Bengal likely over Kolkata.

BEG TO DIFFER

But all other agencies surveyed show that the ‘low’ strengthening over and around Sri Lanka buffeting the island nation with strong winds and showers.

It is likely that parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala also gain from the rain bands that move out to the north, bringing varied amounts of rain to extreme south peninsula.

In the north, true to forecasts, a western disturbance has called in at north Pakistan this morning en route to the western Himalayas and plains of northwest India.

It promises to ‘whiten out’ the high reaches will snow accompanied by rain at many places even as residual moisture drifts over the plains in the form of thick fog.

But the warmth of its steaming engine (moisture) will produce clouds which helps retain solar radiation at the ground level.

COLD IN NORTH

So night temperatures may perk up for next two days, the clouds may go on to shade out the sun during the day.

This might create ‘cold day’ conditions in which the maximum day temperatures will not allowed to rise.

India Met Department has forecast cold day conditions for the next two days for Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

The dense fog (visibility below 200 m) to very dense fog (visibility below 50 m) regime will move with the western disturbance to east India later.

East Uttar Pradesh, parts of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and the rest of east and northeast India will variously be brought under thick fog over the next three days.

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