Kolkata: Spells of thundershower pushed the mercury down on Thursday in Kolkata. While the showers were not uniform across the city in terms of intensity and duration, most pockets received a spell or two, bringing a respite from the scorching sun. The Met office has not ruled out another nor’wester spell between Thursday and Friday night before the city enters another dry spell once again.While the city has been under the spell of cloud on and off, it was the southern pockets of the city that encountered more intense thundershower than the northern and central pockets. Alipore recorded a rain amount of 4.9 mm of rain. The nor’wester spells and gusty wind pushed the maximum temperature down to 32.4°, a low of 3.2 notches from the normal mark. On Wednesday, it was 35.1°.“The distribution of rain was not uniform as the thundershowers were mostly due to local thunder cell formation. Therefore, where there were more intense thunder cells, the amount of rain was higher,” said meteorologist HR Biswas, head of the Regional Meteorological Centre Kolkata.This rain respite in the city is happening after a gap of six days. In addition to Kolkata, many south Bengal districts, including neighbouring South and North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and Nadia, encountered spells of thunderstorm activity during the day.“We can expect another nor’wester spell between Thursday and Friday night. The mercury will start climbing up gradually from Saturday again,” added Biswas.According to a special IMD bulletin, at present there is an east-west trough that is running from southeast Rajasthan to Manipur across cyclonic circulation over northeast Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gangetic West Bengal, Bangladesh and southeast Assam. Additionally, there is also upper air cyclonic circulation over north Bangladesh and neighbourhood.“In view of favourable wind pattern and moisture incursion from Bay of Bengal, enhanced thunderstorm accompanied with strong gusty surface winds likely in some districts of South Bengal during April 16-17,” said the bulletin.Met officials expect thundershower spells at regular intervals to prevent the mercury from surging sharply.
