Heavy rain drenched the city between Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon before a marginal improvement in weather. The Met department has forecast the sun will come out on Thursday.
Between 8.30pm on Wednesday and 8.30pm on Thursday, the Met office recorded around 105mm of rain in Alipore. Around 87mm fell between late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday.
The Met office had a word of hope for Kolkatans reeling under one downpour after another.
The weather is likely to improve from Thursday and the sun is going to come out, according to the forecast. There is little chance of heavy rain in the next few days, the Met office has said.
The well-marked low-pressure area that triggered the rain was travelling in the north-west direction and moved far away from Kolkata.
“The system was over Bankura in the morning. By tomorrow, it is expected to reach Jharkhand before travelling through Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. In Kolkata, the weather will improve from Thursday. It will be sunny and cloudy in phases,” said G.K. Das, director, IMD, Kolkata.
“A spell of rain is not ruled out but the intensity will be much lower than that on Tuesday and Wednesday. The city will see normal monsoon weather. The temperature will rise gradually.”
He ruled out the possibility of the formation of another system over the Bay of Bengal in the next few days.
On Tuesday, as the low-pressure area neared land, coastal areas in South 24-Parganas received heavy rain.
Till Wednesday morning, Diamond Harbour received 150mm of rain and Sagar island 152mm.
The system hit land in Haldia around 9pm and kept moving in a north-west direction, said a Met official. The port town received torrential rain, recording around 216mm till Wednesday morning.
The howling sound of winds preceded, and accompanied, the rain in Kolkata. The showers started around 8.30pm but did not gain steam till midnight.
Between 1am and 8am, the city received at least two “intense spells” of rain, said the Met official. The rain started abating from the forenoon and the sky marginally cleared by the evening.