Monsoon bids adieu, nip in the air kicks in

KOLKATA: With Durga Puja, southwest monsoon has bid adieu to the city . Winds from the snow-capped Himalayas have started blowing in, plunging the mercury and bringing a nip in the October night air.
But could these be signs of an early winter? The Met office is keeping its fingers crossed. If no significant weather system develops over the Bay of Bengal, the mercury will start dipping gradually.
Sunday's minimum tem perature of 23.4 degrees Celsius has been one of the lowest for this particular date in the last six years. Already 2 degrees down from the normal mark, the mercury, however, was 0.1 degree higher than that on October 16, 2012. With the sky expected to remain clear, the night temperature will be below the normal mark for now.
“The monsoon has retreated from the city, completing its withdrawal process from the entire state on Sunday .Monsoon is over now. We are expecting a bright sun free from clouds from now onwards,“ said G K Das, director (weather) at the Regional Meteorological Centre, Kolkata.
The wind started changing direction about five days ago. The moisture-laden southerly wind has now been replaced by a gust of dry northerly wind. As a result, the relative humidity is going down. Along with a clear sky , the breeze from the Himalayas has facilitated the drop in the night temperature.
Since Wednesday , no weather system has developed over the Bay of Bengal that would intervene with the withdrawal of the monsoon.But the Met office is keeping a close watch as any such occurrence might intervene with the gradual decline in the mercury . Two cyclonic circulations -one over Jharkhand and another over the Bengal-Odisha border -had triggered heavy rain on Nabami. This was the last spell the city experienced this monsoon. Even as Kolkatans feared for more rain, the sky cleared up.
“For now, the night tem perature will remain below the normal mark. But this being the season of cyclones, one might just strike any day . In that case, it will ultimately intervene with the gradual process of winter's arrival,“ said G K Das, director (weather) at the Regional Meteorological Centre, Kolkata.
Under normal conditions, monsoon arrives in the city by the second week of June. But this year, the rains arrived as late as June 18. “Initially there was deficit in rainfall in some districts. All that has been made up and overall the state has had a normal monsoon rainfall this year,“ added Das.