Chandrapur sizzles at 47.2°C, Pune’s temperature to drop

PUNE: Chandrapur in eastern Maharashtra sizzled at 47.2 degrees C on Wednesday, recording the season’s highest for the station and possibly the highest temperature in the country so far this summer, while Pune’s temperature fell by a degree to 39.1 degrees C.
The city’s temperature was almost 2.9 degrees C above normal, but lower than Tuesday’s 40.2 degrees C. Temperature, meanwhile, continued to rise beyond 40 degrees C in Lohegaon.Pune’s minimum temperature on Wednesday was 25.3 degrees C, around 2.4 degrees C above normal.
The situation may improve soon as some rain is likely in Pune on May 26. City’s day temperature may slump to 36 degrees C in the next four to five days, Met department officials said.
A senior India Meteorological Department (IMD) official told TOI that day temperature above 44 degrees C was considered abnormal. “In the current hot weather season, parts of Telangana, Vidarbha and Andhra Pradesh are prone to heatwave and hot day conditions, which explains Chandrapur’s temperature reading on Wednesday. The northerly component in wind flow has increased over the past couple of days. These winds are blowing from land regions, which become very hot in summer. Meanwhile, the westerly component in these winds has reduced, triggering rise in temperature,” he said.
Westerly winds usually bring down temperatures over the regions they blow over, as these winds come from the Arabian Sea, which remains comparatively cooler than land regions.
Hot day conditions have, meanwhile, made a comeback over parts of Maharashtra and are likely to continue for another day. Though IMD has not yet sounded a heatwave alert for Maharashtra, officials here said that isolated places in Vidarbha are under the grip of heat wave conditions till May 23.
Even at noon on May 24, temperatures of more than 40 degrees C were recorded at most places in Vidarbha and many places in Marathwada
Day and night temperatures in many parts of the state continue to be considerably above normal. On May 23, day temperatures were above normal by a warm 3.1 degrees C to 5.0 degrees C at a few places in south Madhya Maharashtra.
Another met department official said that temperatures in the state have been rising since the last couple of days and this trend is likely to persist on May 25 too. “Apart from the influence of northerly winds, an anti-cyclone is causing in-situ warming in the region. However, some rain is expected in south Madhya Maharashtra, south Konkan, Goa, Marathwada and Vidarbha from May 26,” the official said.
Met officials, meanwhile, said that the advance of monsoon seems normal and they expect no delay in rains hitting Kerala close to May 30, with a model error of 4 days early or later than expected. There has been no advance in monsoon from May 18 to 24, they said. However, conditions are becoming favourable for its further advance into southern parts of Comorin area as well as some more parts of southwest, southeast and east-central Bay of Bengal during the next 48 hours, an IMD monsoon update said on Wednesday.