Chamba, Lahaul-Spiti and Kullu in Himachal Pradesh continue to be categorised under ‘danger level 2’ for snow and avalanche warning until 5 pm on Tuesday, according to the Defence Geoinformatics Research Establishment based at Chandigarh.
There is no warning for the rest of the hilly regions in North-West India, including Uttarakhand, which witnessed a disaster from a glacier break on Sunday.
The warning for Himachal Pradesh is in view of arrival of a feeble western disturbance, the principal weather maker of the region during winter, from across the international border. India Meteorological Department (IMD) located the incoming system on Monday evening between Kerman and Shiraz in Iran. The system will have to traverse through Afghanistan and Pakistan before entering North-West India.
Isolated rain, snow likely
Under its influence, isolated rainfall or snowfall is forecast over Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh on Tuesday and over the northern parts of Uttarakhand on Tuesday and Wednesday. Dense fog may descend over parts of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi and West Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday morning.
The warmth associated with incoming clouds will cause night temperatures to rise by 2-4 degrees Celsius over North-West India during the next 4-5 days. Prevailing cold wave conditions over this region would lift gradually. The cold wave over South Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, too, would abate.
Strong winds over Gulf of Mannar
The IMD has sounded out a warning for fishermen to observe caution while venturing out into the Gulf of Mannar and the Comorin areas in view of the outlook for strong winds of up to 55 km/hr in speed. An extended outlook for February 13-15 signalled isolated rain breaking out over Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
This may gain further momentum and coalesce into the larger footprint of wet weather emerging from the Equatorial Indian Ocean to bring non-seasonal showers initially into the South Peninsula before propelling to the North along the western corridor from February 19, as per IMD’s extended outlook.
Cumulative rainfall for the season for the country as a whole (January 1-February 8) has fallen into the wrong side of normal (minus four per cent, but normal under IMD specification). The South Peninsula and Goa in Central India have been beneficiaries of the largesse in January. Only Telangana in the South is in some serious deficit (-81 per cent). Elsewhere, North-West India fared poorly, while East and North-East India drew a blank.