Jamshedpur/ Ranchi: While the Patna Met office today held out hopes for a respite from an unusual summer, people kept their fingers crossed in view of the several false alarms during the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, the state continued to reel, with the mercury hovering between 42? Celsius in the state capital and 47? Celsius in Giridih. While there was a notional drop in Jamshedpur today from 45 to 44, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Dumka and Palamu continued to experience temperatures fluctuating from 45 to 47? Celsius.

The Patna Met office, however, saw the formation of a low pressure area over the Bay of Bengal and formation of thunderclouds in several places across Jharkhand. Similar predictions of scattered rainfall and squalls had been made on at least four occasions during the last one month? raising false hopes.

Weather experts agree that the summer has foxed them all. The trends are unusual, not witnessed in the last half a century, they claimed. In May-June this year, the mercury has touched 40? Celsius or more for 25 days in a row in most places, which has not happened in the last 50 years, said A. Wadood and T.N. Jha. The average rainfall too has been much less this year than the 1,000 mm recorded in summer, a phenomenon witnessed only in 3 of the last 50 years.

Besides having affected crops of bitter gourd, brinjals, tomato and chillies, sowing will also get delayed due to the hardness of the land, the experts apprehended. The scorching heat has led to a fall in the water table and most of the wells and ponds have dried up, giving rise to an unprecedented crisis. Both agreed that proper infrastructure required for predictions is woefully inadequate. Against the norm of having a sub-station after every 50-km stretch, there are only three such sub-stations in the whole state. The state continues to depend on the Patna Met office though funds have been released for installing forecasting systems at 11 more places in the state.

In addition to the heat-wave, hot easterly winds blowing at 25 km per hour has added to the people?s discomfiture.