For the month of January, weather activities are mostly confined to northern parts of India. After the withdrawal of Northeast Monsoon, South India goes almost on a silent mode. The central parts of the country as such do not see any passage of weather systems during this time. They are linked with the systems which move across the northern parts, i.e. the influence of weather systems up in North affect the parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
The most dominant weather system we see in Central India is an Anti-Cyclone hovering around Rajasthan and West Madhya Pradesh region. This system at times shields the central parts of the country from the direct impact of weather systems affecting the North.
On the other hand, when a Western Disturbance with its induced Cyclonic Circulation is over North, they tend to drift the Anti-Cyclone over the central parts toward East or South India. The hills and Indo-Gangetic Plains of the country witness rain, snow, Cold Wave, Cold Day conditions during winters. The effectiveness of these weather systems gets diluted till the time it reaches East.
Up in the North, the moisture content is high but by the time it reaches East, the moisture levels start to recede, thus giving light to moderate rains over the same and heavy rains/snow over the hills and plains of the country. In North-east India, it is usually the state of Arunachal Pradesh which is highly affected in terms of precipitation followed by Assam.
As per Skymet Weather, we haven’t yet experienced the severity of winters in term of rain this time. In the past 24 hours, there has been minimum rain and snow. Also, fog has not been witnessed over many areas. Rather, we can say that there has been negligible activity in the past 24 hours in terms of precipitation.
It has been observed that Cold conditions have intensified over many parts of the Northern Plains and couple of stations recorded minimums below normal. In the past 24 hours, Safdarjung observatory recorded minimum at 4.5°C which has gone almost four degrees down in the past 48 hours.
Places like Rewa and Malanjkhand in East Madhya Pradesh recorded the lowest minimums in these first 16 days for the month of January at 3.2°C and 3.5°C, respectively. Places like Karnal, Khajuraho, Gwalior, Manali, Nowgong, Ooty recorded their lowest minimum for this season in past 24-48 hours at 2.4°C, 0.8°C, 2.4°C, -0.6°C, 2.2°C and 3.3°C, respectively.
Also, in past 24 hours, the weather remained dry pan India, traces of rain were seen in the upper reaches of Jammu and Kashmir, like Pahalgam witnessed just 1 mm of rains.
In the coming days, active Western Disturbances will be seen. There will be heavy rain/snow activities up in the hills with moderate weather activity to be seen over the Northern Plains and gradually the intensity will recede by the time it would reach the eastern part of the country.
The Northern Plains of the country can stand a chance to witness Cold Day conditions wherein the maximums can drop to 16°C or even below that. Persistent thick clouding with rains in offing lead to Cold Day conditions and then the minimums can even touch the double-digit mark. Till date, winter rains have performed badly with deficiency touching 53% pan India. The continuous wet spell which is expected to initiate from January 20 up till January 24 might just push up the deficit number.
Image Credit: The Scroll
Please Note: Any information picked from here must be attributed to skymetweather.com