Winter has bid adieu but the hint of chill has not.
On Friday, the Celsius slid below 20 degrees in Kolkata, for the first time in 10 days. The Met office recorded a minimum temperature of 19.3 degrees in Alipore. On February 27, the minimum was 19.1.
The average minimum temperature in Kolkata in the second week of March is around 23 degrees, based on the Met readings compiled over the past three decades.
Kolkatans did not need the Met readings to feel the hint of chill. Getting up early in the morning was enough. "I had to give a cardigan to my daughter as she left for school," said Sayoni Mukherjee, a New Alipore resident whose daughter studies in Class I at a school in Ballygunge. The school bus comes at 7am.
Anagh Dutta, who lives in Kudghat and works for an event management firm, went to a resort in Pailan, near Joka, with a group of colleagues on Thursday night. He rode his two-wheeler back home at night. "I pulled over and took my jacket out of the bag. It felt quite cold," he said.
Barring the early hours, Friday was rather sunny and warm. Around 1.30pm, the overhead sun made its presence very much felt. It was in sharp contrast with the day before.
If the minimum was on the lower side on Friday, the maximum on Thursday was far lower than usual. The Met office had recorded a maximum of 26.7 degrees, a sharp drop from what is normal around this time of the day, which is around 34 degrees.
The day was uniformly cloudy, though there was no rain.
Met officials said Thursday's clouds came from Odisha, where a cyclonic circulation was in the works. The system is now in the form of a trough of low pressure over south Odisha and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, quite far from Kolkata.
As the clouds moved away, the passage became clear for the cold and dry northwesterly winds to enter the upper atmosphere, said a Met official.
"The northwestern and northern parts of India are still cold. Multiple Western Disturbances are causing rain and snowfall. After each spell of snowfall, cold winds trailing a Western Disturbance move towards the plains. Those winds are dragging the Celsius down in south Bengal even after winter," said G.K. Das, director, India Meteorological Department, Kolkata.
The Met office in Delhi has predicted more such spells in the next few days.
"Two Western Disturbances in quick succession likely to affect northwest India, 1st from the night of 10th March and 2nd from the night of 12th March. Under the influence of these systems, isolated light/moderate rainfall/snowfall likely over Jammu-Kashmir-Ladakh- GilgitBaltistan-Muzaffarabad, Himachal Pradesh on 10th; scattered to fairly widespread light/moderate rainfall/snowfall with isolated thunderstorms, lightning likely over the region during 11th-14th March; and Isolated light/moderate rainfall/snowfall likely over Uttarakhand during 11th-14th March," said the Met bulletin.
Das said that in Kolkata, both the day and night temperatures are likely to rise gradually.
"But the nights and early mornings will still bear the effect of the northwesterly winds," he said.