The alert has been issued for two days from June 26 to 27. (IE)

IMD Alert! The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Wednesday issued an orange alert for nine districts of Kerala. Among the districts for which the alert has been issued are Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Alapuzha, Ernakulam, Idukki, Kozhikode, and Wayanad. In warning metrics of IMD, Orange alert signifies heavy to very heavy rainfall for which people have to be on alert.

The IMD has four types of colour-coded warning system — Green means light rain with no warning, Yellow – moderate rain with watch (be updated), Orange – heavy to very rainfall with alert (be prepaid), Red – very heavy to extremely heavy rainfall with alert (take action). The alert has been issued for two days from June 26 to 27.

The weather department has also predicted fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall over Western Himalayan Region and Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi, West Uttar Pradesh, and East Rajasthan during next 48 hours.

In a statement, the IMD said that the southwest monsoon has further advanced into remaining parts of Kutch and Gujarat region and Madhya Pradesh, some parts of Rajasthan, Chandigarh, North Punjab, most parts of Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and entire Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Gilgit-Baltistan and Muzaffarabad. It also said that the conditions had become favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon into some more parts of Rajasthan, remaining parts of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, most parts of Haryana and Punjab during next 24 hours.

The department has also predicted heavy to very heavy rainfall over northeast India, Sub-Himalayan West Bengal & Sikkim and Bihar during next 4-5 days. It said isolated extremely heavy rainfall was also likely over sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim and Bihar during 25th-26th June and over Assam and Meghalaya during 24th-27th June.