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regular-article-logo Tuesday, 25 February 2025

Kolkata weather: Temperature rises but winter not yet over, says Met office

On Thursday, Met office recorded a minimum temperature of 21 degrees Celsius in Alipore, it was more than six notches above normal

Debraj Mitra Published 31.01.25, 10:21 AM
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Representational image File picture

The chill is all but gone but the Met office is still shy of bidding winter adieu.

On Thursday, the Met office recorded a minimum temperature of 21 degrees Celsius in Alipore. It was more than six notches above normal. Wednesday was also similar.

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"Conditions like this are likely to prevail over the next six to seven days. After that, a marginal dip in the Celsius is likely. Another Western Disturbance is likely after that," said H.R. Biswas, the head of the weather section at the Regional Meteorological Centre, Alipore.

Unlike the monsoon, the Met office does not announce the withdrawal of winter. But usually, in Met parlance, the period from December 15 to February 15 is considered winter in Calcutta.

"We cannot say for sure that winter is over. But even if the chill returns, it is unlikely to be colder than what we have experienced this year," said a Met official.

On January 11, the minimum was 12.3 degrees, the lowest this season.

"Under the indirect influence of a Western Disturbance, the wind pattern in south Bengal has changed. An anticyclonic wind flow from the Bay of Bengal is injecting a lot of moisture into the lower atmosphere. That has completely stalled the flow of northwesterly and northerly winds and pushed the Celsius up," said the Met official.

The minimum relative humidity — a measure of the moisture content in the atmosphere during the driest part of the day — was a staggering 61 per cent on Thursday. The usual for this time of the year is between 30 and 40 per cent, said a Met official.

A Western Disturbance can cause rainfall but this has not happened in Calcutta and south Bengal this time. But the successive Western Disturbances have been regularly altering the wind pattern.

The northerly and northwesterly winds are being replaced by southerly and southwesterly winds.

The frequency of Western Disturbances went up in January.

As a result, the few cold spells that south Bengal has had did not last long. "There was hardly any continuity in the spells," said a Met official.

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