After cyclone, north westerly winds send a chill down South

Minimum temperatures have trended down over the South Peninsula during the 24 hours ending Wednesday morning after colder north-westerly winds started to filter into the region deserted by erstwhile severe cyclone ‘Phethai.’

But the temperatures should look up from the weekend after a persisting circulation over the South-East Bay of Bengal and adjoining Equatorial Indian Ocean heads towards Sri Lanka-Tamil Nadu coasts.

Moist air from Bay

This is because the circulation in the Bay would start fanning in the warm and moist easterlies into the South Peninsula driving away the colder north-westerlies during the early part of next week.

Meanwhile, a cold wave has set in over the plains of North-West India with ground frost conditions being reported from some areas. These conditions are forecast to continue into the weekend thanks to the lack of any strong western disturbance system.

The western disturbances are warm and moist waves bringing relief from the cold events over North-West India. They sometimes dip into the North Arabian Sea and gather moisture to be dumped as rain or snow over the plains/hills.

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the cold wave is likely to extend over some parts of North Maharashtra and East India during the next three days, as in the case of the South Peninsula.

Low temperatures

There is also no significant change likely in the wind pattern over the plains of North-West India. Under this scenario, minimum temperatures will continue to prevail 3-4 deg Celsius below normal over some parts of plains here.

Currently, there are two away-going and feeble western disturbance systems, with one lying over the eastern parts of Jammu & Kashmir and the other over Afghanistan.

Both are moving across higher latitudes (outside India’s northern borders) and may at best cause isolated rain/snow over the high reaches of Jammu & Kashmir over the next two days.

This is how the plains have come under more or less calm but cold weather with the western disturbance being located far away to be of any consequence to the local weather pattern.