City swelters at 42°C, breaks 64-year-old heat record

Kolkata hit a scorching 42 degrees Celsius on Monday, shattering the city’s heat record of the past 64 years. The preceding day, Sunday, saw Kolkata reaching a peak of 41.3 degrees Celsius.

The city would likely endure high temperatures for the next couple of days, with Kolkata’s maximum temperature projected to stay above 40°C for the next 48 hours.

The Regional Meteorological Centre in Alipore noted that Kolkata last faced a comparable situation in 1960.

This year, Kolkata witnessed the highest number of April heatwave days, with Monday recording a maximum temperature of 42°C, marking the eighth day this month with temperatures exceeding 40°C since the heatwave began on April 19. Meanwhile, the state power minister Aroop Biswas held a meeting with the CESC officials, including the senior officials of his department, at Vidyut Unnayan Bhawan, where he reprimanded the CESC officials for power cuts.

The minister also directed the CESC officials to immediately send generators to the areas where technical faults occur. The minister also told the CESC to increase manpower and mobile vans.

Incidentally, the Meteorological Department issued two bulletins, stating that the heatwave conditions are likely to persist until at least May 2, with no indication of rainfall in Kolkata until at least May 5. Thunderstorms may happen in the city between May 5 and 6, which could potentially bring down the temperatures significantly, providing relief from the ongoing heatwave conditions.

“An anticlockwise turn in the southerly winds has been observed in the Bay of Bengal, which tends to be conducive for thunderstorm activity. If the trend continues, there may be a mature thunderstorm between May 5 and 6, bringing substantial cold and dry winds, which would, in turn, push the mercury down,” a weather official said.

An increase in the flow of cool southerly wind has been detected from the Bay of Bengal, countering the hot dry northwesterly wind. While this is not sufficient to cause a thunderstorm, its influence curtails the temperature from rising significantly, the weather official further added.