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The India Met Department (IMD) has issued a fresh warning of thunderstorms, gusty winds and moderate squalls over North-West India on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The warning is valid for Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, where hailstorms are also likely, and Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and West Uttar Pradesh.
High winds
This amounts to a replay, though not as destructive, of last week’s event when more than 125 people died and property — including standing crops — were flattened as lightning, thunder squalls and high winds lashed the region.
In Monday’s forecast, the IMD said that wind speeds associated with thunderstorms and squalls could range between 50 and 70 km/hr not just over North-West India but also East India including Bihar, as well as the North-Eastern States.
The continued violent weather can be attributed to the movement of western disturbances, the low-pressure waves carrying cooler winds from the Mediterranean/Caspian Sea, across the heated up plains of North India.
Helpful features
An incoming disturbance has reached North Pakistan, and has spawned an offspring cyclonic circulation over West Haryana and its neighbourhood.
This would be the fulcrum around which thunderstorms and squalls would rear their heads.
Additionally, a trough from North-West Rajasthan to Central Madhya Pradesh across North-East Rajasthan, is making a potential line around which thunderstorms, squalls and high winds may develop.
On Monday evening, clouds hung heavy over Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand with a new front approaching the Indo-Pak border along West Punjab and adjoining North-West Rajasthan
The rest of the weather-making circulations and troughs are dispersed to the East India and South India, with a cyclonic circulation over South-East Arabian Sea deserving special mention.
Arabian Sea watch
It is here that Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) models continue to predict a weather system - low-pressure area or a depression - developing over the next eight to 12 days (between May 15 and 19). The GEFS model of the US Climate Prediction Centre sees a likely cyclone developing, but no other model has indicated this with as much confidence.
In contrast, the IMD expects the Bay of Bengal to develop some churn, but so significant as to merit a special mention as of now. In the South, clouds have massed up along the South-West Tamil Nadu-Kerala-Karnataka coast from Kanyakumari to Murdeshwar reaching into the interior from Mysuru, Coimbatore, Dindigul and Madurai to Tirunelveli.
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