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The sudden February rain on Sunday added some extra puddles as hurdles for golfers on the final day of The Tolly Cup Golf, held in association with The Telegraph. “Around 85 golfers turned up and enjoyed their game in the cool weather,” said Gaurav Pundit, golf course superintendent of the club. Picture by Amit Datta
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Summer-bound Calcutta has caught a whiff of winter on the rebound but this is a tryst that won’t last the week, says the Met office.
A monsoon-like Sunday with overcast skies and pitter-patter dragged the maximum temperature down to 20.8 degrees Celsius, nine notches below normal and the lowest on this day in a decade.
In the last 10 years, the maximum temperature on February 17 has never been below the 26.5 degrees Celsius recorded in 2007. The average temperature for the day in a decade is 30 degrees Celsius, almost 10 points more than Sunday’s.
The Celsius dip had little to do with winter, though.
“Winter departs the city between the first and second weeks of February. So we have already left the season behind. Sunday’s rain was triggered by a low-pressure trough stretching from east Uttar Pradesh to coastal Bangladesh, touching Bihar and Gangetic Bengal,” a scientist with the India Meteorological Department said from Delhi.
The trough is already weakening with the western disturbance that caused it moving north and northeast. “So the city can at best hope to have two to three more days of cool weather before the Celsius resumes its climb to summer,” the weather scientist said.
According to the Met office, the rain is likely to subside by Monday evening but the Celsius won’t shoot up until Wednesday.
Just two days ago, the maximum temperature had scaled 32.1 degrees, two notches above normal. The 12-degree dip since Friday made Sunday’s weather seem even cooler than it really was.
Birthday girl Nilanjana Chakraborty, 24, a resident of Dhakuria, couldn’t have hoped for a better present from the weather gods. “It is so much better celebrating outdoors. Despite the drizzle, me and my friends ended up spending a lot on time on the terrace today,” she said.
The rain took many morning walkers and joggers by surprise. “I thought the drizzle wouldn’t last but it kept coming in spurts. I waited till around 7.30am before deciding to give my regular jog a miss,” said bank executive Rajarshi Mandal, 28, of Salt Lake.
Till 5.30pm, it had rained 10mm both in Alipore and Dum Dum, which is a third of the total rainfall the city normally receives in February: 30.7mm.
The normal temperatures for the city at this time of the year are 30 and 18 degrees Celsius, based on 30-year data from 1971.
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