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The evolving weather over North-West and Central India intensified on Thursday with a rare low-pressure area growing out of a prevailing cyclonic circulation over North Rajasthan.
The ‘low’ is the offspring of a parent western disturbance inching in close with the India Met Department (IMD) locating it over Central Pakistan on Thursday. The offspring ‘low’ apart, the disturbance has rolled out a trough into the North-East Arabian Sea (reaching into the seas off Gujarat), feeding additional moisture into North-West India.
A surfeit of moisture has fuelled a lot of weather in the form of heavy snow, heavy rain, thunderstorms and even hailstorms over the past couple of days. Forecasts for Friday indicated that the heavy weather may start moving to the East in line with the western disturbance and the ‘low,’ which might weaken in the process. Heavy rain/snow has been forecast at isolated places over Sikkim, while heavy rain or thundershowers are likely over Jharkhand.
More rain likely
Back in the North-West, thunderstorms accompanied by hailstorms and gusty winds may prevail over Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh.
A similar forecast is valid for parts of the East and the North-East too, especially Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal & Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.
Strong winds with speeds reaching up to 50 km/hr could prevail over the North-East Arabian Sea and the adjoining Central Arabian Sea. Fishermen are advised not to venture into this area.
More rain is predicted for the next week as per an extended range forecast from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research; All India Coordinated Research Project on Agricultural Meteorology; Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture; and IMD.
Accordingly, the current week (February 1 to 7) will have seen excess rainfall over the rain-deficit western parts of the country, including West Maharashtra, West Madhya Pradesh and North-West India.
The week that follows (February 8 to 14) would once again witness excess rain over the North-West, the South Peninsula, entire East Coast, and North-East India.
The South Peninsula will see rain mostly from the seas around Sri Lanka and adjoining Tamil Nadu as well as the southern parts of the Bay of Bengal.
Meanwhile, North-West India could get hit by another western disturbance from the weekend, generating more snow and rain over the hills and thundershowers over parts of the adjoining plains.
Saurashtra & Kutch (+355 per cent); Rayalaseema (+321) per cent; and Telangana (+246 per cent) have emerged surprise gainers from ‘large excess’ rainfall so far (until February 6) in the new year.
Andaman & Nicobar Islands (+190 per cent) and West Rajasthan (+64 per cent) are quite some distance away in the list of the Met subdivisions receiving ‘large rainfall excess’ (60 per cent or more above normal).
Excepting the Andaman & Nicobar islands, the rainfall bounty can be straightaway attributed to the combination of the ‘intense’ western disturbance and its offspring cyclonic circulation (January 24 to 30).
In fact, the same combination is in operation currently over North-West India and Central India, with forecasts suggesting that it is deep enough to trigger rainfall over Central India and parts of Peninsular India as well.
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