National Weather Forecast: Friday, January 10

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has announced that the North-East monsoon over the South Peninsula will draw to a close with effect from today, a delay of 10 days. The skies over Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala, and adjoining Coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema and South Interior Karnataka are expected to clear up in the process.

This would officially set the stage for the morning chill associated with the winter to settle down even as the sun batters the landscape during the day. The North-East monsoon normally runs from mid-October to December-end. Rainfall accumulation this season has been normal after the excess from the South-West monsoon preceding it. It helped to have a strong and trend-setting positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and largely benign disposition (neutral conditions) in the Equatorial and East Pacific working in the background.

A clear and sunny Friday afternoon at Alwarpet, Chennai.

The warm to very warm seas of the West Indian Ocean and adjoining South-West Arabian Sea also triggered a record-matching number of tropical cyclones during the season. The IOD phenomenon delayed the sequential monsoon in the Southern Hemisphere, setting off devastating wildfires in a tinder-like environment over Australia from September. The raging conflagration may have started abating after the IOD started weakening and finally decayed a few days ago with a cyclone intervening, albeit on the wrong coast.

Fresh disturbance to hit North-West

Closer home, for Chennai city, sun and clouds would be mixed on a day when the winds will be easterly to north-easterly, with no chance of precipitation. Similar conditions are expected to pan out over Puducherry as well as the rest of Tamil Nadu, according to the IMD and most international weather models.

In North-West India, a weather-making fresh western disturbance will start affecting the hills from Saturday onwards, and induce the formation of a cyclonic circulation over West Rajasthan by Monday. It will bring about fairly widespread to widespread snow or showers over the hills on Sunday and Monday, with with possibility of isolated heavy falls over Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh (Monday).

Hosur Road in Bengaluru’s Electronic City on Friday. The city is set to see a cloudy day.

Isolated thunderstorms along with hail and lightning are also forecast over both the hills and adjoining plains. Cold wave conditions are forecast for Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and West Madhya Pradesh until the western disturbance/cyclonic circulation combo starts to affect these areas.

Dense to very dense fog is forecast over isolated pockets over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and West Uttar Pradesh; dense fog has been predicted for a few pockets over Bihar and in isolated pockets over Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, the plains of Bengal and Odisha on Sunday and Monday.

Dense fog envelops parts of North India

Yesterday (Thursday), saw cold-day to severe-cold day conditions (when maximum day temperatures dip to 16 degrees Celsius or below) in isolated pockets over Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and North Rajasthan. This morning, very dense fog was observed at isolated pockets over South-West Uttar Pradesh while it was dense to moderate over Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Tripura.

Kerala continued to record the highest reported maximum temperature of 35.2 degrees Celsius at Kannur during the 24 hours ending on Friday morning. The lowest minimum (night) temperature of 2.2 degrees Celsius was recorded at Amritsar over the plains.

Among major cities, at around 10.30 this (Friday) morning, Delhi reported the lowest day temperature of 7.4 degrees Celsius while Chennai was the hottest at 23.4 degrees Celsius, and getting hotter.

Mangaluru is expected to record a maximum of 34 degrees Celsius during the rest of the day while Srinagar could see the lowest temperature of -3 degrees Celsius.

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