- Maximum temperature on December 20, 2023: 24.6 degrees Celsius.
- Maximum temperature on March 20, 2024: 21.1 degrees Celsius.
If you found it difficult to match the date and the weather on Wednesday afternoon, you were not off the mark.
Incessant overnight rain and overcast conditions made Wednesday afternoon the second-coldest that Calcutta has seen in March in at least 50 years, Met records showed.
The maximum temperature on Wednesday was 21.1 degrees, a staggering 13 notches below normal. On Tuesday, the maximum temperature was 30.4 degrees.
Only March 13, 2003, saw a lower maximum temperature (20.4 degrees). The city had received rain on that day as well.
The Met office recorded a minimum temperature of 18.7 degrees Celsius in Calcutta on Wednesday. It was five notches below what is normal for this time of the year.
The minimum temperature is the official marker of how cold a day is. But the day temperature, Met officials said, really determines how cold a day feels.
The low day temperature was the main reason for the chill that Calcuttans felt on Wednesday.
From Barrackpore to Behala, jackets, hoodies and pullovers were spotted frequently beside raincoats and umbrellas on city roads on Wednesday.
“I took an auto from Ekbalpore to Hazra around 2pm. It felt so chilly that I used my backpack to shield my ears from the wind,” said Ankur Baidya, a medical representative who was headed to the Jatin Das Park Metro station from a private hospital in Alipore.
The minimum temperature is recorded in the early hours of the day, usually just before sunrise. The effect lingers on for a while.
But the effect of the maximum temperature — which is recorded in the afternoon — is felt for most of the day.
“On Wednesday, there was hardly any difference between the minimum and maximum temperatures. It is very unusual and the main reason the day felt so cold. Usually, there is a difference of around 11 degrees between the two,” said G.K. Das, the director of
the India Meteorological Department, Calcutta.
The city received around 20mm of rain between 8.30pm on Tuesday and 8.30pm on Wednesday. The rain was not heavy but persistent. The sun hardly came out on Wednes day. And a steady breeze made the day feel colder.
Three weather systems teamed up to cause the overcast conditions in Calcutta, said Das.
“A trough extends from Jharkhand to south Assam, via Bengal, in the lower level of the atmosphere. Another trough, in the upper atmosphere, extends from northeast Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region. There is a high-pressure zone over the Bay of Bengal. The Bay is feeding sufficient moisture into the two systems, leading to the formation of rain-bearing clouds,” he said.
In a fresh bulletin issued on Wednesday, the Met office said “light to moderate rainfall” is likely across south Bengal, including Calcutta, on Thursday as well.
In north Bengal, the showers are likely till March 23, the bulletin said.
“The rain is expected to start abating in Calcutta from Friday. But the sky will be partially cloudy,” said Das