PESHAWAR, Feb 11: The current spell of snowfall and rain, which started on Feb 2, is likely to continue till Sunday, meteorologists told Dawn on Friday.
Unusually heavy snowfall and rain, a result of strong westerly winds, have brought the temperature further down in several upper regions of the country.
"Although Peshawar and other plains of the Frontier are expected to experience a let-up in rain on Saturday, residents of hilly areas are not likely to get a break in the current spell of snowfall until Sunday," a meteorologist said.
The Northern Areas, Azad Kashmir and northern parts of the Frontier are expected to experience more rain on Feb 17 and 18, when a changing weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean would reach Pakistan via Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, he said.
"The wet spell got prolonged because two weather systems overlapped," said the meteorologist, adding that "we were expecting a two-day break (on Sunday and Monday) but the arrival of thick clouds covering most parts of the country's northern regions prevented that from happening".
It was for the ninth consecutive day on Friday that Peshawar, Chitral, Mansehra, Swat, Buner, Dir, Malakand and Hazara received rain intermittently. The Pakistan Meteorological Department said that snowfall and rain in the country had exceeded the normal levels.
Peshawar received 131mm of rain in January 2005. In the corresponding month of last year, the provincial capital had recorded only 64mm of rain. In February so far, it has recorded 97mm of rain, a much higher level than last February's 60mm of rain.
Other parts of the Frontier province recorded a similarly high level of rainfall when compared with the previous five years. The PMD's observatory in Chitral recorded 92mm of rain in February and 50.6mm in January. The one in Parachinar noted 140mm of rain in January and 110mm in the first 11 days of February.
Officials at the PMD's observatory in Dir told Dawn by telephone that during the current month they had recorded 177mm of rain. "The level of rain recorded so far in February is much higher," said Mohammed Hakim from the Dir observatory.
"The 131mm of rain recorded in Peshawar last month was only two millimetre less than the highest ever recorded for the month in 1942," Mushtaq Ali Shah, deputy director of the PMD, Peshawar, said.
