Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : The year 2019 is all set to join the club of the top five cold Decembers India has seen since 1901. The other four years with mean temperatures less than 20 degrees Celsius have been 1919, 1929, 1961 and 1997.
Mahesh Palawat of Skymet says the December in 1997 with an average temperature of 17.3 degrees Celsius has been the coldest so far in Delhi-NCR.
With three more cold days anticipated before the year ends, December 2019 is currently averaging around 19.58 degrees Celsius. “December 2019 might end with an average of 19.15 degrees Celsius in the region,” says Palawat.
Now, the reason for this mind-numbing cold in the plains of the northwest and central India has been the large gap–of more than 10 days–between two consecutive western disturbances (WDs).
The last WD this December was around 20th. The next WD, which will break the flow of the chilly northwesterly winds into the plains, will arrive on December 30.
It will then arrest the continuous slide in temperatures with some warm easterlies. Another reason for the perpetually low maximum and minimum temperatures has been the continuous haze/fog at higher levels, disrupting the sunrays.
The relief of warm days is expected to continue till around January 3 as from 4th the temperatures will again drop. A gradual respite is likely from January 12/13 with the shifting of the sun’s position.
Incidentally, India’s official weather forecaster, the India Meteorological Department, had predicted a warmer than normal winter (December to February) in most parts of India in its forecast last month.
The weather office, which uses the Monsoon Mission Coupled Forecasting System model for seasonal forecasts, said there was a relatively “high probability” of above-normal minimum temperatures in the core cold wave zone, which includes Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
However, it has been anything but that so far. The areas have been reeling under a bitter cold wave which is expected to abate only from December 31.
A fresh WD will affect the Western Himalayan region from December 30 night, according to the IMD. Under its influence, Western Himalayan region—Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand—will experience light/moderate scattered-to-fairly-widespread precipitation from December 31 to January 3 with the peak intensity on January 2.
The cold wave conditions continuing since December 15 are expected to abate from December 31, the Met office said on Friday. Light/moderate isolated-to-scattered rain/thundershower will also occur over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, north Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh between December 31 and January 2. Isolated thunderstorm/hailstorm at isolated places is also likely to occur over south Uttar Pradesh.
Due to interaction between western disturbance and lower-level easterlies from December 31, scattered-to-fairly-widespread rain with thunderstorm/hailstorm at isolated places is likely over Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
In the meantime, due to persistence of cold northwesterly winds in lower levels over northwest India and other favourable meteorological conditions, cold day to severe cold day conditions are expected over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, north Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh till the year-end, says the IMD.
