Kolkata: Mercury plunges to 15.1°C, Met spies further drop today – Times of India

KOLKATA: The city woke up to the first shivers of winter chill on Monday even as the minimum temperature plunged three notches to 15.1°C, the lowest of the season so far. It is set to dip by another degree on Tuesday even as the icy northwesterly winds keep flowing into the state from the snow-capped Himalayan peaks of Jammu and Kashmir.
The chill may persist for at least a week since there is no weather system to block the cool winds from keeping the mercury down, said weathermen. “We expect the minimum temperature to slide to 14°C on Tuesday. It may drop further below the 14°C-mark but marginally. With the northwesterly flowing unobstructed, we expect the chill to continue for a week,” said Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) director, GK Das.
Snowfall occurred in Jammu and Kashmir last week, triggering icy winds across the north Indian plains. They, however, didn’t reach Kolkata or south Bengal due to a low-pressure trough over the Bay of Bengal that generated clouds and moisture. The city remained cloudy till last Saturday and received sporadic drizzles that occasionally got heavier.
The cloud cover had brought the maximum temperature down and prevented a slide of the minimum temperature even as the gap between the two narrowed down to just two degrees last Monday. The low-pressure had formed in the aftermath of Cyclone Jawad that fizzled out off the Odisha coast and reached Bengal as a low-pressure system.
The maximum temperature, too, dropped two degrees below normal to 25.3°C on Monday. According to private weather forecasting service AccuWeather, the real feel temperature was around 15°C on Monday night even as the temperature touched 16°C. It could be marginally higher than the maximum temperature on Tuesday. Real feel temperature is the measure of how the temperature actually feels on the human skin and is calculated on the basis of multiple weather factors like wind speed, sun ray intensity, humidity, rainfall, cloudiness and elevation.