We have reached mid-December and people of North India are still awaiting chilly winters which is the hallmark of December. Till now, minimum temperatures have not gone down below seven degrees in Delhi-NCR. Similarly, most parts of northern plains have not witnessed severe winter conditions.
Normally by this time, hills of Jammu and Kashmir gets covered by snow and minimum temperatures at many places such as Sriganganagar, Churu, Hisar and Umaria, start settling between 2-5 degrees.
According to Skymet Weather, the reason for this relatively warmer winter can be attributed to less frequency of active Western Disturbances. Otherwise, these systems would have given moderate to heavy snowfall by now.
The period between October and February see numerous Western Disturbances traveling in lower latitude affecting Western Himalayas as well as the northern plains of Punjab, Haryana and sometimes even up to North Rajasthan and West Uttar Pradesh including Delhi-NCR.
Until there is heavy snowfall, winter will not set in in its true sense. After snowfall and passage of Western Disturbance, the flow of icy cold northerly winds reaches over North and Central India, dropping the both day and night temperatures.
Besides this, a strong Western Disturbance usually induces a cyclonic circulation over Haryana, Punjab or North Rajasthan due to which winter rains occur over plains. These rains are also instrumental in dropping the temperature but till now we have not seen any such activity as well.
However this year, we have not seen any strong western disturbance till now and thus, snowfall over Jammu and Kashmir has also been very scanty.
Though back to back Western Disturbances have been approaching the region but they were feeble in nature and failed to give rain and snow. However, they had altered the flow of cold northwesterly winds, which led to rise in minimums.
Further, weather models are not indicating any strong Western Disturbance in the next 10-12 days. Though we expect scattered snowfall over hilly region on December 22 and 23 but it will not be enough to drop the minimums significantly.
So, we can say winter is going to remain milder.
Image credit: www.indiatvnews.com
Any information taken from here should be attributed to skymetweather.com
