Thursday, January 19: The excruciating cold that had gripped the upper parts of the country is in the process of being replaced by a temporary spell of unseasonal rains, all thanks to a new system that is currently affecting North and Northwest India.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), a fresh western disturbance runs as a trough in middle tropospheric westerlies at present. These disturbances are essentially low-pressure systems that originate over the Mediterranean Sea, gather moisture as they are pushed towards India by high-altitude winds, and subsequently dump the precipitation over North India.
Under this WD’s influence, light showers are likely in isolated locations across north Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi for the next 48 hours (January 19-20) and north Rajasthan for today alone.
The system’s presence will lead to a change in wind direction, which will effectively trigger a 2°C rise in minimum temperatures over Northwest India until Friday (January 20). Thereafter, no significant change is expected in the night-time mercury levels for the subsequent four days.
