Temperature short of 40°C, but city sizzles

PUNE: Puneites had their first encounter with oppressive heat this summer with the mercury almost touching the 40-degree mark on Monday. However, it felt much hotter than the maximum temperature of 39.9 degrees celsius — up from Sunday’s 39.4 degrees celsius — which, in fact, is the third highest maximum temperature for April in five years.
On April 30, 2013, the city’s maximum temperature touched the highest since 2011 at 41.3 degrees celsius, followed by the second highest maximum April temperature of 40.7 degrees celsius on April 30, 2014.The mean maximum temperature for April is 38.1 degrees celsius, which means that Monday’s maximum temperature was almost 1.8 degrees higher than normal.
On April 29, 2011, the highest maximum temperature for April was recorded at 39.7 degrees, while in 2012, the temperature touched 39.9 degrees on April 9, making it the highest maximum temperature in April that year. The met department’s weather outlook on Monday showed that the maximum temperature is likely to rise to 40 degrees in the coming days.
The minimum temperature too rose to 23.2 degrees celsius on Monday, though the average April minimum temperature is 20.7 degrees. Minimum temperatures were above normal by six to eight degrees at other locations in the country too, including a few places over Punjab and West Rajasthan. They were also above normal by two to five degrees at most places over Madhya Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, East Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Gangetic West Bengal and Jharkhand; at many places over Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Konkan, Goa; at a few places over Jammu and Kashmir and at isolated places over sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, northeastern states, Marathawada, Vidarbha and south interior Karnataka.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) data on Monday showed that Lohegaon was even hotter than Pune with a maximum temperature of 40.3 degrees celsius, over 2.3 degrees above normal. A met department official said that temperatures in the city are rising due to clear skies as well as an absence of the influence of a western disturbance. “Clear skies enable the sun rays to fall directly on land, causing it to heat up,” the official said.
The met office’s forecast for the region showed temperatures shooting up in several parts of Maharashtra as well as other locations. It said that on Sunday, maximum temperatures appreciably rose over south Gujarat region and north Madhya Maharashtra. They were appreciably above normal over Gujarat and Saurashtra, above normal over north Konkan, north Madhya Maharashtra and Kutch.
However, some respite may well be in the offing as the met office has also forecast light rain in isolated parts of the state in the next couple of days, including districts of south Konkan-Goa, south Madhya Maharashtra and Marathwada.
In Pune too, the met department has forecast thunderstorms with rain on April 21, followed by partly cloudy skies till April 26.