cold Arctic air invade the N-W plains left behind by the outgoing western disturbance.

A western disturbance moving across north-west India added a spring to its feet overnight on Wednesday to create a lot of weather over east India.

It set up contrasting weather in its rear and in front – freezing temperatures in the north-west but rising warm air up front that rustled up hailstorm and thundershowers.

VIOLENT WEATHER

India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast that the violent weather would continue to hold over the east India on Thursday and Friday. This is being attributed to a virulent upper air cyclonic circulation that broke away from the parent disturbance.

The IMD has warned of hailstorm for Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, east Madhya Pradesh, north Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand on Thursday too. The violent weather would then shift to sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and stay put until Friday.

GROUND FROST

Meanwhile, north-west would see cold Arctic air invade the plains left behind by the outgoing western disturbance to set off cold wave over Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. Mercury might plunge to spark ground frost in some parts of Punjab, Haryana and north Rajasthan.

But the conditions would get reversed towards the weekend with the arrival of the next western disturbance.

This would expectedly lift up minimum temperatures over north-west India and offer some respite from the frigid conditions.

COLD TO EAST

Cold wave would shift to east since the preceding western disturbance would have just left the region and further away across the border. The 24 hours ending Wednesday morning saw cold wave conditions prevail over Gujarat and parts of Rajasthan and Punjab.

Even parts of central and north peninsular India including Konkan, north coastal Andhra Pradesh and coastal Orissa saw low mercury.

WELCOME SHOWERS

Forecast for the next two days indicated welcome showers for Konkan, Goa, Madhya Maharashtra, Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. This is because of southeasterlies from the Bay of Bengal fanning into south peninsular India being directed north-northeast along a trough of low-pressure lying close to Sri Lanka coast and extending into north Tamil Nadu.