Hail in districts, light rain in city; White sheet covers parts of South 24-Parganas
Telegraph | 18 March 2025
A hailstorm struck parts of South 24-Parganas, West Midnapore, Bankura and Hooghly on Sunday evening.
The storm left some of the areas covered in a thick white sheet. Crops were damaged in parts of South 24-Parganas, residents said.
Some parts of south Bengal, including Calcutta, received light and scattered rain, accompanied by streaks of lightning, on Sunday evening. The showers brought temporary relief from the sultry conditions throughout the day.
“While several places got thunder and showers, hailstorms were reported from some districts like South 24-Parganas, Bankura, Hooghly and West Midnapore,” said a Met official in Alipore.
A weather scientist said hailstones are formed when thunderstorm updrafts (strong currents of air that are moving up) carry raindrops into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere, where the raindrops freeze. The hailstones then become bigger by coming into contact with liquid water drops that freeze on the hailstones’ surface.
The hail starts falling when the thunderstorm’s updraft can no longer support the weight of the hailstones.
A woman in Lakshmi-kantapur, a village in the Mandirbazar CD Block in the Diamond Harbour subdivision, said: “The hailstorm was so strong that farmlands were damaged. Fallen tree branches lay strewn on the road on Monday morning. I could not get any transport to the railway station and had to walk almost 5km to board a train to Calcutta.”
She works as a domestic help at a Ballygunge home.
A senior official in the South 24-Parganas district administration told Metro: “Hailstorms have been reported from Lakshmikantapur, Magrahat, Bishnupur and some other areas. The extent of the damage is not huge. It is still being assessed.”
Sunday’s showers prevented the day temperature from shooting up on Monday. The Met office recorded a maximum of 33.7 degrees Celsius in Alipore, which is just under the normal. The maximum temperature was lower than usual in the districts as well.
Districts like Bankura, East Midnapore, Jhargram and Purulia, and parts of Calcutta received thunderstorms and light rain on Monday evening as well.