India's Himalayan hill stations, including Manali and Shimla, are experiencing an unusually long dry spell, remaining snowless into January 2026. This marks nearly two months without significant precipitation, impacting tourism and raising concerns about water resources and glaciers. Weak western disturbances, influenced by a shifted jet stream, have brought minimal rain to plains but bypassed higher elevations, leading to warmer, drier conditions and persistent smog in the Indo-Gangetic plains.