El Niño, lack of western disturbances causing dry winter in hills, fog in northern India: IMD

The India Meteorological Department in a statement on Thursday explained that severe weather conditions in the country’s northwestern plains and western Himalayas can be attributed to three factors.

These are the lack of active western disturbances over northern India, prevailing El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and strong jet stream winds over North India.

Western disturbances are weather systems that originate in the Mediterranean and travel eastward, picking up moisture along the way and bringing rainfall to northwest India outside of the country’s monsoon season.

Two western disturbances have passed over the country this winter, but their impact has been confined to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and north Maharashtra. As a result, there has been little to no snowfall in India’s Himalayan region, including in Jammu and Kashmir, this season, along with higher than normal temperatures.

El Niño is the phenomenon of warmer temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Historically, such conditions lead to fewer “cold wave” days in northern India, when the minimum temperature recorded at weather stations drop by more than 4 degrees Celsius below normal.

“[Its impact] is visible in terms of lesser number of cold wave days during December and January [this season],” the meteorological agency said on Thursday. The presence of El Niño is usually...

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