Guwahati: In some soothing news for northeast India, currently getting baked in the sweltering heat, intense weekend rains might help cool things a bit.The weatherman has forecast scattered to fairly widespread rains of light to moderate intensity with thunderstorms, lightning and gusty winds over Northeast India during the next five days (April 20-24).

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said that an atmospheric instability has made itself comfortable across northeast India. And this system is expected to bring lingering rains (and snow at higher altitudes) accompanied by localised thunderstorms in the coming days.

While the precipitation activity might reduce the impact of current heatwave conditions across all states, the Met department is not expecting any notable dip in mercury over the next five days. Meanwhile, heavy rains have been forecast over Arunachal Pradesh between Thursday and Saturday (April 20-22) as well as Assam and Meghalaya on Friday and Saturday (April 21-22).