Char Dham Yatra Halted Temporarily as IMD Issues Alert for Heavy Rains
New Delhi: Amid incessant rains across India, the state government of Uttarakhand has halted the Char Dham Yatra temporarily due to heavy rains across the state. The MeT department has issued a warning for three days from October 17-19.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that a western disturbance lies over Afghanistan and neighborhood and is interacting with easterlies at lower levels from the Bay of Bengal. The weather department stated that it is very likely to continue for the next 2-3 days and under its influence, heavy rainfall is expected over several states of the northwest, northeast and peninsular India for the next few days.
In a weather bulletin released at 1:30 PM on Sunday, the IMD predicted fairly widespread to widespread light to moderate rainfall with heavy rainfall over Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura between October 18-20, over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya between October 18 and October 21.
According to IMD, Uttarakhand may also witness fairly widespread to widespread light to moderate rainfall with heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places between October 18 and October 19. Himachal Pradesh may also see heavy showers on October 18.
The Met department has stated that a fresh spell of the easterly wave is likely to affect south Peninsular India from October 20.
It predicted fairly widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls over Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry from October 20 and said that it is likely to continue for subsequent 3-4 days.
Due to strong easterly winds from the Bay of Bengal, heavy spell of rainfall activity is very likely to continue over east India till October 20, the IMD said.
It said that fairly widespread to widespread light to moderate rainfall with heavy rainfall at isolated places is very likely over Odisha on October 18, over Gangetic West Bengal between October 18 and 20 and over Sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim during October 18-20. Jharkhand may also see heavy showers between October 18-19 and Bihar on October 19.
The IMD said that fairly widespread to widespread light to moderate rainfall with heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places is very likely Uttar Pradesh on October 18 and 19 and over Haryana and Chandigarh on October 18.