Season’s sharpest nor’wester brings down temp by 5 degrees
Times of India | 18 April 2025
123 Kolkata: Tall, dark and thick clouds converging from two directions invaded the city sky on Thursday evening, triggering the sharpest thundershower spell of the season. The nor'wester spell with gusty wind dragged the mercury down by five notches in about an hour, bringing respite to the city that had gone without significant showers for the past few weeks. The Met office expects a few more showers on Friday as well.
Some areas, like Ultadanga and Dhapa Lock Gate, received 51 mm of rain in less than two hours between 5.30 pm and 7 pm. While the intensity of the rain was not the same in all pockets of the city, the whole of Kolkata got rain.
"Two cloud columns, one from the Jharkhand and the other from the Bangladesh side, reached the Kolkata sky in the evening. The height of the convective cloud was close to 13 km over the Kolkata sky, triggering the rain," said weather scientist Sourish Bandyopadhyay of Regional Meteorological Centre, Kolkata.
The Met officials said this kind of tall cloud column can cause intense rain with gusty wind and lightning. By 5.30 pm, darkness had descended on Kolkata. Many motorists and bikers switched on the headlights to beat the darkness. Within minutes, the city was pounded by a sharp spell that lasted about an hour, with lightning in between.
The showers tamed the mercury instantly. The temperature that stood around 29°C around 5.30 pm nosedived to around 24°C. While the wind speed in the city remained moderate, at 30 kmph, it felled a tree on Bentinck Street, causing temporary disruption in traffic. Some pockets also saw waterlogging for some time. The KMC officials deployed pumps to drain the rainwater.
According to a special bulletin from the IMD, there is an east-west trough from east Madhya Pradesh to south Assam across north Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Gangetic Bengal, and Bangladesh, along with a cyclonic circulation over Bihar and the neighbourhood. Coupled with a favourable wind pattern and strong moisture incursion from the Bay of Bengal, the city and other parts of Bengal are expected to get more thundershowers on Friday.
"We can expect moderate rain in Kolkata on Friday along with other neighbouring areas, like Howrah, Hooghly, South 24 Parganas, Midnapore, and Jhargram. The intensity could be high in pockets of some districts," Bandyopadhyay said.
While the maximum temperature was consistently below the normal mark for the past 11 days, what was pushing up the real-feel was the high moisture content. Though the city experienced the year's first squall last Thursday, when Alipore recorded a wind speed of 53 kmph, it rained only 1.2 mm on that day. While the squall made the night comfortable, the minimum temperature started rising from the next day. But this Thursday's spell may provide the city with longer relief.
According to the Met office, on average, Kolkata should get 3.4 rainy days in April, with the monthly mean rain totalling 58 mm.