India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued an orange alert for heatwave conditions in Northwest, North and Eastern parts of the country. The IMD said that heatwave to severe heatwave conditions will prevail over parts of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha for the next three to four days.

Senior Scientist at IMD Dr RK Jenamani said that the average temperature is expected to rise by 5 to 6 degrees celsius over these regions in the upcoming days. The weather department has also forecast that heavy to very heavy rainfalls with isolated extremely heavy rainfalls are very likely to continue over Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim and Northeast India during the next 3-4 days. It added that light to moderate rainfall with thunderstorms, lightning and gusty winds upto 50 kilometers per hour are likely over Goa and Maharashtra during the next 4 days.

Similar weather conditions will continue over Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands till the 17th of this month. On Southwest Monsoon, the IMD said that conditions are favourable for further advancement of monsoon into some more parts of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Coastal Andhra Pradesh and northwest Bay of Bengal during the next 2-3 days.  

Meanwhile, in Delhi, the IMD predicted partly cloudy skies with the possibility of light rain accompanied by thunderstorms or lightning and heat wave conditions with strong surface winds gusting up to 35 Kilometres per hour. The maximum temperature in the national capital is expected to hover around 44 degrees Celsius.