A brief spell of rain on Thursday evening brought some respite from the heat and humidity that has been prevailing for a few days.
The Met office in Alipore said the rain resulted from thunderstorm cells that formed near the West Bengal-Jharkhand border.
“The thunderstorm cells formed over Birbhum and Purulia and moved towards Kolkata, which is why it rained in the city,” said G.K. Das, director of India Meteorological Department, Kolkata. “Such thunderclouds have the characteristics of a Nor’wester.”
The Alipore Met office recorded 1.4mm of rain in the evening.
A cool breeze lowered the discomfort level in places across the city.
The maximum temperature recorded on Thursday was 34.8 degrees Celsius and minimum was 29.5 degrees.
The Met office, however, ruled out any possibility of the arrival of monsoon in the next three or four days.
Father, son die in lightning strike
A sudden bout of thunderstorm in and around Malda town in north Bengal, around 350km north of Kolkata, in the early hours of Thursday led to the death of a man and his teenage son who were struck by lightning in a village some 40km away from the town.
Sources in the district administration said that during the storm, Dulal Ghosh, 53, and his son Anup, 16, who hail from Aladia village under Bhutni police station, were struck by lightning when they went to a cowshed to shift their cattle.
When they didn’t return home for long, their family members started searching for them and found the duo lying scorched and dead.
Anup, local sources said, was a bright student. He had passed the recent Madhyamik examination with 84 per cent marks this year.
“The boy had just taken admission in Class XI,” said a villager.
The family, administrative officials said, will get compensation for the lightning deaths in due course.
In Malda town, a number of trees got uprooted and blocked different roads in the storm. Some houses also got damaged.