Weathermen predict thunderstorm, rain today

MP | 2 Jun 2017 | Kolkata:Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) indicated severe thunderstorm with intense rain over Gangetic Bengal in Kolkata, North and South 24 Parganas, Malda, Murshidabad and West Burdwan on Saturday with a wind speed would be around 50 km per hour or more.

At present, Kolkata's weather is hot and uncomfortable for last few weeks as the maximum day time temperature reached 42 degrees Celsius recently. But intermittent rain for the last few days gave the citizens the much-awaited respite from the humid weather. On Friday, the highest daytime temperature was 36 degrees temperature and it was around 28 degrees Celsius at night.

"It is now a much better climate in Kolkata in comparison to the last 15 days. Now, we are basically waiting for monsoon to arrive," said Sourav Bhattacharya, a city-based software engineer.

According to MeT office, in the last 24 hours, from 8.30 am on Thursday, the Dum Dum Airport recorded a good 20 mm of rainfall. Meanwhile, Alipore observatory recorded a mere 0.8 mm of rainfall.

These showers have been going on for quite some time keeping the mercury levels close to normal. "These weather conditions have been attributed to the presence of a trough which was running from the Sub-Himalayan Bengal up to Gangetic Bengal. Due to this, moisture had been increasing over Kolkata resulting in cloud development, in turn resulting in some rains," said Skymet weather, a private weather forecaster.

Meteorologists expected pre-monsoon activities to continue over Kolkata. In fact, the probability of afternoon and late evening showers over the city is quite high. Thereafter, the rains would disappear for 3-4 days and dry weather would continue. Rains would once again come back to the city on June 7 or June 8.

"The arrival of Southwest Monsoon over the city is expected on June 7 or June 8," the meteorologist added.

Meanwhile, the corporations are working on a war footing to prevent waterlogging and water and mosquito-borne diseases during the rainy season with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) starting pre-monsoon works in their respective areas.

The two corporations are confident that the advanced and upgraded machinery along with extensive de-silting of the sewerage system in some low-lying areas known for water logging will help in addressing the problem.

KMC set up several pumping stations and brought semi-automatic manhole de-silting machines, gully pit empties machines, bucket machines and suction pumps. On the other hand, BMC have also equipped themselves with many sophisticated machines to clean up high drains before the onset of monsoon. The Health department of both the corporations started working to prevent water and mosquito-borne diseases.