Kolkata: Dark clouds from a depression spread across the city have been causing intermittent rain since Sunday night. The city has been under its spell throughout Monday and the Met office has not ruled out some intense spells until Tuesday morning. After that, the intensity will decrease, with the depression moving away towards Jharkhand. However, some western districts are expected to be lashed by heavy rain on Tuesday.
A low-pressure area formed over Southeast Gangetic West Bengal and adjoining Bangladesh turned into a depression on Monday. On Monday evening, the first depression of this monsoon was positioned 90 km north of Kolkata and 50 km east of Burdwan.
Alipore recorded a rain amount of 7.9 mm in the past 24 hours. The frequent rain spell, along with cloud cover, caused the maximum temperature to plunge 4.4 notches below the normal at 28.4 degrees.
"This system is expected to move over to Jharkhand by Tuesday. Hence, most of the rainfall activity in the city will happen till Tuesday morning. But even if the rain intensity and frequency decrease once the system moves away, the city will continue to have a cloud cover and a few spells of rain," said meteorologist H R Biswas, the head of the weather forecast section at Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) Kolkata.
While the spells of rain in Kolkata were intermittent, the city was spared heavy rain on Monday. However, pockets in some districts like North 24 Parganas and Nadia received heavy rain during the day.
"This depression is well-structured but not very strong as it is being fed by mixed wind systems. The monsoon flow is normal with the trough in a normal position. While we can expect rain intensity to decrease by Tuesday afternoon, some western districts could get heavy spells while the depression moves towards the west-north-west," said RMC Kolkata Meteorologist Sourish Bandyopadhyay.