By IANS
New Delhi : If last week the talk around the dinner tables in houses across Delhi was the long winter season, this week it is bound to be about the sharp sun and sudden warm weather, presaging the onset of summer.
With the fans whirring and residents of Delhi mothballing their woollens for a long, long hibernation, “it already feels like the summer,” said Malati, a middle-aged woman working with a local software company.
The mercury in the capital Sunday touched 34 degrees Celsius, nearly seven degrees above normal for this time of the year. The minimum was, however, around 13 degrees, which is normal.
The tale was repeated in most parts of the northern plains, with the day’s high hovering nearly 6-8 degrees Celsius above what is normal for this time of the year.
The Met Office has forecast that the current trend of high day temperatures would continue for most of the week.
Even the normally cold Jammu and Kashmir was not spared the lash of unexpected heat. Srinagar Sunday saw a high of nearly 19 degrees Celsius, a deviation of nine degrees above the normal.
The promised snowfall for the day did not happen even as the weatherman has predicted some more snowfall for Monday.
The weather office said that with the arrival of the easterly winds, scattered to heavy rainfall is possible in parts of West Bengal, Sikkim, northeastern states and parts of southern coastal Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
The following were the maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall in major cities for the 24 hours till Sunday morning, with figures in brackets denoting deviations from the average.
City Maximum Temperature Minimum Temperature Rainfall
(C) (C) (mm)
Delhi 33.9 (+7) 13.2 (0) Nil
Mumbai 33.5 (+2) 15.8 (-3) Nil
Chennai 32.7 (+2) 22.9 (+1) Nil
Kolkata 30.7 (0) 21.7 (+4) Nil
Ahmedabad 35.7 (+3) 12.4 (-5) Nil
Bangalore 32.6 (+1) 18.6 (+1) Nil
Bhopal 35.6 (+5) 14.2 (-1) Nil
Bhubaneswar 34.1 (+1) 18.9 (-1) Nil
Chandigarh 29.8 (+5) 15.0 (+4) Nil
Dehradun 27.4 (+3) 13.6 (+3) Nil
Panaji 34.6 (+3) 19.6 (-2) Nil
Guwahati 31.0 (+3) 12.8 (-1) Nil
Hyderabad 34.8 (+2) 18.2 (-1) Nil
Jaipur 34.8 (+6) 13.8 (0) Nil
Lucknow 31.0 (+3) 12.5 (0) Nil
Nagpur 37.0 (+3) 16.8 (0) Nil
Patna 29.0 (+1) 14.4 (-2) Nil
Pune 36.0 (+3) 13.4 (-1) Nil
Srinagar 19.0 (+8) 4.0 (+2) Nil
Thiruvananthapuram 33.4 (+1) 24.0 (0) 5.8