Winter

Met dept blames it on 'western disturbance'

Nitin Sethi, TNN Feb 13, 2007, 02.30am IST

NEW DELHI: It's the most quoted word by meteorologists in winters western disturbance. It brings winter rains and it's a couple of months late this year, hitting western India in February instead of December.

While people in Shimla rejoice the first snow of the season and cities in the north-west enjoy a second spell of cold wave, sweeping down from the hills of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, experts say the rains are going to continue over the next few days and spread further east.

They also claim that the spell is not out of the ordinary. Western disturbance is a local name for a global phenomenon. The rest of the world calls it extra-tropical wind or storm or system.

Unlike the tropical cousin, which forms over the oceans picking up water, the western disturbance sweeps through the globe, to rain where it hits odd geographical shapes. In India's case, the western Himalayas does the trick. "The western disturbance is like a mother.

When it hits these patches, it delivers off-springs that are far more petulant and bring showers, while the mother disturbance itself continues down, showering a bit in the northeast before it goes along to China," explained a climate expert.

India is able to predict it not more than 5-7 days in advance. So, the met department was able to announce the second winter spell.