Srinagar, Dec. 12 -- Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed prolonged dry weather conditions mostly for the past 40 days causing the rivers to dry up and prompting dozens of incidents of forest fires, weather and forest experts said.

They said that the Union territory, including the Himalayan valley, has been reeling under a prolonged dry spell since the beginning of November with 85% deficit in rain or snowfall across the region.

Officials and weather experts said that J&K witnessed just 6 mm of average rainfall against a normal precipitation of 43 mm from November 1 to December 9. Kashmir and Jammu divisions separately received rainfall of 8 mm (deficit of 82.1%) and 6.6 mm (deficit of 82.6%) against their respective normals of 44.7 mm and 3...