But there has been no relief for north-western and central India

The reason for a somewhat less abnormal April is that big deviations above normal are confined this month to a smaller part of the country. The maximum March temperature this year was among the top five for the month since 1951 in 13 states.

This is the case for only nine states in the April 1 April 17 interval. This decrease in the geographic spread of abnormal maxima has come largely from north-eastern states, which were unusually hot in March. Average maximum temperature in five of eight north-eastern states – all except Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura – is 5% to 21% less than normal so far this month.

Meanwhile, maximum temperatures have created new records in states in north-western and central India. The April 1- April 17 interval is either the hottest or second hottest this year since 1951 in seven states: Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (second hottest), and Delhi (second hottest). March was the 4th hottest or lower since 1951 in all these states except Gujarat and Rajasthan, where it was second.

April is the second hottest in Delhi since 1951 only because of the trends after April 13. Up to April 13, there were seven days when the maximum temperature for the day this year was the highest since 1951, and eleven days when it was among the top three.

To be sure, the deviation above normal decreased after the first week of April in even some other northern states, such as Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. This also happened in southern states such as Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, where the average maximum temperature ended up below normal in the week ending April 14 and in the April 15- April 17 interval.