Orange alert issued for Chhattisgarh, Odisha as heavy rain hits central India

The India Meteorological Department has issued an orange alert for very heavy rainfall in Chhattisgarh and Odisha, as a new spell of rain moves across central and eastern India.

Isolated areas in Chhattisgarh, east Madhya Pradesh, east Uttar Pradesh and Odisha face exceptionally heavy downpours, while Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the northeast are also bracing for torrential rain.

Northwest India, covering Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, is expected to see scattered to isolated heavy rainfall from the same system.

In Delhi-NCR, the IMD has forecast overcast skies with light to moderate rain 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 linked the rain to two converging weather systems, an active atmospheric system over northeast Madhya Pradesh and a low-pressure area forming off the West Bengal-Bangladesh coast, with a monsoon trough running from Amritsar to the Bay of Bengal.

The rain arrives during an otherwise comparatively dry monsoon season, with cumulative rainfall through mid-August sitting 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.

This rain surge arrives during what has otherwise been a comparatively dry monsoon season this year, with cumulative rainfall through mid-August running about 12 percent below the Long Period Average.

Photo by Harsh Mangal, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0