The India Meteorological Department has issued an orange alert for very heavy rainfall in Chhattisgarh and Odisha, as a fresh spell of rain sweeps across central and eastern India.
Isolated places in Chhattisgarh, east Madhya Pradesh, east Uttar Pradesh and Odisha are on alert for exceptionally heavy downpours, while the northeastern belt covering Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland is also expected to see torrential rain.
Northwest India, including Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, is forecast to receive scattered to isolated heavy rainfall as part of the same weather system.
In Delhi-NCR, the IMD has forecast overcast skies with light to moderate rainfall through Sunday, with no severe flood warning currently active, though localised waterlogging is expected on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway and NH-9 underpasses.
The department has attributed the rain to two converging weather systems, an active atmospheric system over northeast Madhya Pradesh combined with a low-pressure area forming off the West Bengal-Bangladesh coast, with a monsoon trough stretching from Amritsar to the Bay of Bengal.
The rain surge comes during what has otherwise been a comparatively dry monsoon season, with cumulative rainfall through mid-August running about 12 percent below the Long Period Average.
The IMD attributed the current spell to two converging weather systems: an active atmospheric system over northeast Madhya Pradesh combined with a low-pressure area forming off the West Bengal-Bangladesh coast.
A monsoon trough currently stretches from Amritsar all the way to the Bay of Bengal, a configuration that typically drives widespread rainfall across the belt it passes through.
For Delhi-NCR specifically, the IMD has projected overcast skies with light to moderate rainfall spells through Sunday, without any severe flood warning currently in place for the region.
Localised waterlogging is expected on low-lying stretches including the Delhi-Meerut Expressway, NH-9 underpasses, and parts of Indirapuram and Sahibabad in Ghaziabad.
Photo by Harsh Mangal, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
