More violent weather in the offing for North-West, East India

Western disturbances continue to keep their date with North-West India in a procession, with the latest one lying straggled across North Pakistan and adjoining Jammu & Kashmir on Tuesday evening.

There’s a successor waiting further West over East Afghanistan, with a third one expected to come into the reckoning by February 28.

An offspring cyclonic circulation over south-west Rajasthan is setting up most of the violent weather over the western half of North India, while a line-up of troughs left behind by away-going disturbances is doing the honours over the eastern half.

Widespread rain

An India Met Department (IMD) update said that fairly widespread to widespread rain/snow along with isolated thunderstorms/hailstorms will break out over the hills over the next two days.

Over the plains, it would be fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated thunderstorms/hailstorms for North Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh during the same period.

The IMD has warned of strong surface winds with speeds reaching up to 40 km/hr gusting to 50 km/hr over the plains, mainly across Punjab, Haryana, West Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Madhya Pradesh.

The East and North-East are in a ‘tinder box’-like condition with the troughs engineering incursion of a lot of moisture from the Bay of Bengal and wind confluence at the lower levels.

Troughs in East

Scattered to fairly widespread/widespread rainfall with isolated thundersqualls, hailstorms and lightning are forecast to persist over the North-Eastern States during the next three days.

Isolated thunderstorm activity is likely over Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bengal and Sikkim while isolated heavy rainfall is forecast for Assam and Meghalaya on Wednesday and for Arunachal Pradesh on Thursday.

The weather-generating troughs lie extended from East Bihar to Gangetic West Bengal; Interior Odisha to North Interior Karnataka across south Chhattisgarh and Telangana; and over the Equatorial Indian Ocean and adjoining South-West Bay.

Apec’s forecast

Meanwhile, a weather outlook for March to May issued by the Busan, South Korea-based Apec Climate Centre, has suggested that most parts of the country will receive normal rainfall except North Kerala and adjoining Coastal Karnataka.

The Busan centre has also given its outlook for June-July-August, coinciding with the first three monsoon months, signalling excess showers for the North-West, and just normal to slightly below normal for the rest of the country.

Among the three pre-monsoon months, May could likely be the driest for most parts of the country, it said.