The Celsius is on its way up, so much that many Calcuttans had to switch on the fan on Thursday.
For most of the day, wearing an added layer of clothing was almost impossible.
The Met office, though, warned against packing the woollens back into the wardrobe. The Celsius is going to drop from January 26, it said.
Nischal Parekh, a New Alipore boy who lives in Pune for work, has come to Calcutta to attend a friend’s wedding, which will be held on Friday. He wore a “Nehru jacket” to a prenuptial ceremony at the bride’s Chetla home on Thursday.
“After a while, it was impossible to keep it on. I came down and left the jacket in my car parked on the road outside,” said Parekh, 39, who works with a leading investment bank.
At a club in Behala, the Tricolour was hoisted to mark Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s birth anniversary. The hoisting was followed by an adda session. “After a while, we had to switch on the fan because all of us were feeling hot,” said Rana Kar, a member of the club.
Kaustav Mallick, who lives in Kasba, switched on the AC after a long time on Thursday. “I came back from the market around 11.30am. I was sweating and it was quite hot. I switched on the AC and kept it on for around 40 minutes,” said Mallick, 41, a school teacher.
The Met office attributed the Celsius rise to a system over the Bay of Bengal.
“There is an anticyclone over the Bay of Bengal. The moisture-laden anticyclonic winds are dominating the lower level of the atmosphere. The Bay winds have almost stalled the flow of the northwesterly winds in the lower level of the atmosphere,” said H.R. Biswas, the head of the weather section at the Regional Meteorological Centre in Alipore.
On Thursday, the minimum temperature was around 17 degrees, three notches above normal. The maximum was 27 degrees, around two notches above normal.
The minimum relative humidity — a measure of the moisture content during the driest part of the day — was around 60 per cent. Usually, it is in the range of 40 per cent in January.
In Calcutta, winter does not usually mean uninterrupted chill. The season is divided into cold spells caused by the free flow of northwesterly winds and warm spells brought by Western Disturbances.
A Western Disturbance is on the anvil over the northwestern border of India. It is expected to pass from west to east in the coming days. “But this time, the system will not have much of an influence in south Bengal. It is tipped to pass through the upper reaches,” the Met official said.
The chill is likely to return on Sunday. “The anticyclone will dissipate soon. The northerly and northwesterly winds will return and so will the chill,” he said.