coming up !! Good easterlies and good westerlies.

Dawn of the New Year may herald a burst of isolated to scattered showers over parts of northwest India and adjoining central India.

Interactive Rain

This will come about as a westerly system digs in deep to the south across the northwest Gujarat-southwest Rajasthan early next week.

Interaction of the westerlies and the monsoon easterlies across the peninsula is shown as setting off a trail of rains from this region propagating in a north-northeast direction.

The whole of the peninsular west, most of central India and parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar expected to slip under a wet cover during the course of the period, according to international models.

Coincidentally, this would also be the time around when a likely low-pressure area/depression in the Bay of Bengal could hit north Sri Lanka and southeast coast of Tamil Nadu in the immediate neighbourhood, these models aver.

Easterly Wave

The system is expected to break away from a concurrent easterly wave, one of which is already affecting southern peninsular India, an update by India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Monday. During the 24 hours ending Monday morning, the prevailing easterly wave brought fairly widespread rainfall over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, while it was scattered over Tamil Nadu.

Mercury Falls

An INSAT imagery in the afternoon showed the presence of rain-bearing clouds over parts of Nicobar Islands, South Bay of Bengal, Southeast Arabian Sea and South Andaman Sea.

Meanwhile, northwest India is expected to come under the influence of passing western disturbances as early as from this Wednesday.

An IMD outlook on Monday said that a feeble western disturbance may affect the western Himalayan region on Wednesday and Thursday.

Cool northwesterly winds are currently blowing across the Indo-Gangetic plains. Minimum temperatures have fallen by 1 to 2 deg Celsius over some parts of northwest and central India over the past 24 hours.

The lowest minimum recorded overnight in the plains of northwest India has dipped relative to the previous day to 0.6 deg Celsius at Adampur in Punjab.

Frost Watch

A weather warning issued by the IMD retained the outlook for night temperatures to probe 4 deg Celsius and even lower.

This could trigger ground frost in isolated pockets of Punjab, Haryana, west Uttar Pradesh and north Rajasthan during the nights of Tuesday and Wednesday.

No significant change in minimum temperatures is expected over northwest and central India on Tuesday and Wednesday, given the calming influence of an incoming western disturbance.

But mist or shallow fog may over parts of Punjab, Haryana, north Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the early morning hours thanks to the moisture feed embedded in the westerly system.