North India faces winter woes: Heavy rain, thunderstorms hit region

Rain lashes North India: Amid bone-chilling winter, unexpected rain accompanied with thunderstorms and cold wave lashes parts of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Delhi-NCR. Since Wednesday, several states have been experiencing constant rain, causing a drop in temperature.

Meanwhile, Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted that many districts in Punjab, Delhi-NRC, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana witness heavy rainfall, thunderstorm and bone-chilling cold conditions. 

The heavy downpour that started on Wednesday morning has resulted in roads blockages and waterlogging, further increasing the difficulty for the people of the city, who already are facing the harsh winter.

Indian Meteorological Department also predicted that the cold weather conditions accompanied with thunderstorms is likely to remain the same on Thursday. "One patch is moving across Delhi and is currently giving light to moderate rainfall at a few places, accompanied by moderate to intense thunderstorms and lightning and gusty winds," said IMD.

"Another patch is moving from Rohtak and Jhajjar (Haryana) towards Delhi, this may give another spell of light to moderate rainfall at a few places accompanied by moderate to intense thunderstorms, lightning and gusty winds after 2-3 hours," IMD said. 

Meanwhile, several parts of Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit, Baltistan, Muzaffarbad, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand recieved light to moderate fairly widespread to widespread snowfall and this is likely to continue during the next five days under the influence of the western disturbances. 

Orange Alert in Punjab 

Indian Meteorological Department issued orange alert in several districts of Punjab and orange alert has been issued in Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr, Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar, Patiala and Malerkotla of Punjab. 

The weather forecasts also stated that cold wave conditions are expected over any part of the country during the next five days.