Kolkata: An overcast sky throughout the day with multiple rainy spells forced the city to keep an eye on the deep depression that inched closer towards Andhra Pradesh and Odisha coasts on Wednesday. Even as Kolkata is out of the system’s path, its outer periphery will continue to bring more rain to the city.The system crossed north Andhra Pradesh-south Odisha coasts between Vishakhapatnam and Gopalpur, close to Kalingapatnam as a deep depression late on Wednesday night. Met officials said the impact in Kolkata and other parts of Bengal will be maximum on Thursday.“After the system enters the land, it will keep moving northwards. Once it gets inside Odisha, the system’s proximity to our region becomes closer, affecting the wind pattern in different layers and injecting higher volume of moisture. This in turn will bring enhanced rainfall in most parts of Bengal. For Kolkata, we are expecting heavy rain on Thursday,” said HR Biswas, head at the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC), Kolkata.While the rain intensity is likely to taper down gradually, Met officials said the city will continue to get rain on Friday as well.Till Tuesday, the Met office predicted the deep depression to impact Kolkata with moderate rain. But on Wednesday, it updated its rain alert to heavy rain. In Met parlance, a 24-hour rain count ranging between 70 mm and 110 mm of rainfall is considered “heavy”.On Wednesday, Alipore recorded 27.4 mm rain till 5.30 in the evening.The maximum brunt of the deep depression in Bengal is expected to be borne by coastal districts, including South 24 Parganas, East and West Midnapore and Jhargram, where heavy rain is expected to be accompanied by gusty wind and lightning. The Met office has also forecast extremely heavy rain in some North Bengal districts on Thursday and Friday.Last year, Kolkata logged around 251 mm of rainfall in 6 hours on Sept 23. The heavy rain played spoilsport during the Durga Puja celebrations as it left most parts of the city knee-deep in water. “The deluge last year was caused by a low-pressure area. Even as the system was only a low-pressure area, the core of the system affected our region directly, triggering that kind of rain. This time, we will be impacted by the outer periphery of the system. Hence, we expect only heavy rain in city,” said the RMC Kolkata head.On Wednesday, the gloomy sky and the rainfall forced the mercury to slip further to 29.6°C, which is 2.9 notches below normal.
