Winter is not over yet; there are chill and rain planned for this weekend. The Meteorological Department has issued a warning of 'heavy snowfall and rain' on January 18 and 19 over Kashmir valley which has witnessed record-breaking snowfall in this season.
It has also issued a warning of heavy snow and rain in Jammu and Himachal Pradesh on February 19. The hills of Uttarakhand, which surprisingly have seen less than normal snow this season, are expected to see scattered to widespread rainfall during this spell while the north western plains of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh might see some rain.
This inclement weather is the outcome of a western disturbance that will be active from the night of February 17 to February 21.
Winter precipitation in north India is the result of western disturbances which develop around the Mediterranean seas and then proceed eastwards to the subcontinent. Since they are high altitude phenomena, unlike monsoon depressions, they cause snow in the hills, and often hail along with rain in the plains. In a season around seven to ten such systems develop. They are the sustenance on which the rabi crop is traditionally dependent.
This season, snowfall in Jammu and Kashmir has notched records, with some areas getting the heaviest snow in a decade during earlier spells in January. In Gurez, a two decade record was broken on the Republic Day with seven to eleven feet of snowfall.
