12 Kolkata: After a dry Friday, the city is expected to get thundershowers over the weekend. The Alipore weather office has forecast rain in the city between Saturday and Sunday, along with many other coastal districts. The Met office has also issued an orange warning for thunderstorms and lightning accompanied by hail and gusty winds for one or two places over East Burdwan, West Burdwan, Bankura, West Midnapore, Howrah, Hooghly, North 24 Parganas, and Nadia districts.
"The window period for the possibility of rain in Kolkata is between the second half of Saturday and Sunday night. The rain spells this time in the city are likely to be light to moderate but with less intensity than the thunderstorm activities on Thursday," said HR Biswas, head of the Weather Forecast Section at Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) Kolkata. The city received 47.7 mm of rain on Thursday, making it the highest Feb single-day rain count in the past few years. After the Thursday shower, the wind pattern changed again to mostly northwesterly, due to which there is less moisture incursion, making the city dry. However, the wind pattern started changing gradually from Friday night. "Due to the presence of a favourable wind pattern and strong moisture incursion from the Bay of Bengal at lower tropospheric levels, thunderstorms with light to moderate rainfall, hailstorms, and gusty wind activity are very likely to occur in some districts of South Bengal during Saturday and Sunday," said a special bulletin from IMD.
"The wind pattern at the lower level is gradually changing to southerly, making the conditions favourable for thundershower activities," added Biswas. The Met office expects a trough to form due to the change in the wind patterns, which in turn will trigger the thundershowers.
According to the climatological table maintained by the IMD RMC Kolkata officials, the city should get 1.7 rainy days in Feb. The Thursday rain dragged the mercury down, with Kolkata recording a minimum temperature of 18.4°C, a notch lower than normal, and also a fall of five notches from the previous day.
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