Wednesday, November 9: Gulmarg found itself wrapped in a blanket of pristine snow earlier this week, with tourists taking advantage of the picturesque scenery to click pictures and frolic in the snow. While the snowfall activity has been subdued since Monday, things are likely to pick up once again today, with Jammu & Kashmir and its neighbouring territories set to witness a renewed spell of rainfall and snowfall in the coming days.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), scattered to fairly widespread light or moderate rainfall/snowfall is expected over Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit-Baltistan, Muzaffarabad, and Himachal Pradesh over the next two days (November 9 and 10). Uttarakhand will also experience isolated light to moderate rainfall or snowfall in the same period.
Given these forecasts, a yellow watch (meaning ‘be updated’) has been issued across Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, and Himachal Pradesh for Wednesday. And district-level yellow alerts have been sounded in Baramulla, Poonch, Mirpur, Kullu, Shimla, and Ramban, among others.
The precipitation can be attributed to the fresh western disturbance that is to affect the Western Himalayan Region from today onwards. Such western disturbances, specifically the ones in winter, bring a majority of the post-monsoon and winter rains in low-lying areas and heavy snow in mountainous areas of North and Northwest India.
Furthermore, this new western disturbance might combine with last week’s system to bring isolated to scattered drizzles over West Uttar Pradesh and West Rajasthan on Wednesday (November 9) and north Punjab, north Haryana and Chandigarh on Wednesday and Thursday (November 9-10).
Meanwhile, the weather was generally cloudy in Jammu & Kashmir during the last 24 hours. On Tuesday, Srinagar recorded a nighttime temperature of 5.4°C, Pahalgam 2.9°C, and Gulmarg -2°C. And Drass town in Ladakh region had -1.1°C, Kargil -1.6°C and Leh -2.6°C while Jammu had 14.6°C, Katra 12.6°C, Batote 6.3°C, Banihal 4.2°C, and Bhaderwah 5.4°C as the minimum temperature.
(Weather.com)