The rain/snow over Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand reduced significantly on Monday with a prevailing western disturbance moving away from the region.

But the recess may not last long since another weather-maker disturbance is expected to drift in across the international border and trigger isolated to scattered rain/snow over the western Himalayan region for the next couple of days.

A third disturbance in quick succession may bring fairly widespread to widespread rain/snowfall once again over the Western Himalayas from Thursday to Saturday. Rains are forecast for the plains of North India on Thursday and Friday.

Dense to very dense fog in the morning hours is very likely to prevail at a few places over Haryana and at a isolated places over the rest of the northern plains and lower reaches of Himachal Pradesh during the next two days.

Rain and snow from travelling western disturbances have been a welcome feature of the first week of the New Year, delivering 70 per cent excess rain to Jammu & Kashmir. Adjoining Himachal Pradesh has recorded an excess of 11 per cent. But Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi are in deficit of 49 per cent; Punjab, 62 per cent; and Uttarakhand, 49 per cent. The rest of the North and the East have had scanty or no rain.

Cyclone ‘Pabuk’ weakens

Meanwhile, erstwhile cyclone ‘Pabuk’ had weakened into a deep depression before crossing the Andaman Islands on Sunday evening-night with wind speeds of up to 65 km/hr gusting to 75 km/hr.

The landfall happened close to Port Blair between 6.30 pm and 8 pm, following which the deep depression entered the South-East Bay of Bengal, while moving away from the Indian coast.

The India Met Department (IMD) sad on Monday morning that the deep depression had weakened into a depression over the South-East and East-Central Bay of Bengal and was lying practically stationary 150 km north-west of Port Blair.

It stuck to a track in the north-west direction exactly as forecast, and is now expected to move North for sometime and then recurve to the north-east towards the Myanmar coast.

 

There was no way it could have changed course West from the Andaman Sea and headed towards Sri Lanka or South Peninsular India as many would have wished. The just concluded North-East monsoon has been a disaster for South Peninsular India, leaving a significant rain deficit. A January cyclone would have helped.

There were two rare occasions in the past — January 7, 1929 and January 17, 1906 — when a cyclone had travelled all the way from the Andaman Sea and crossed South Peninsular India. On the first occasion, it made landfall just to the South of Chennai (then Madras) and in the second, it hit the North-East Sri Lanka Coast before making a second landfall near Rameswaram.

 

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